Luna (2 page)

“No Rhea?” Ella asked from her corner on the couch. Selena shook her head no.

“I couldn’t get her to come.” Beside Ella, seated in the armchair, Margaret shook her head, tsk-tsking brusquely.

“You can’t talk to her when she’s like that,” she said disapprovingly. Margaret was close to Rhea’s age, the only old woman in the room, most of the women had retired from the club by the time they were that old, and she seemed to need to deny to everybody the possibility that she might ever be like Rhea.

“She’s her own worst enemy,” Helen said, still standing in the doorway, and Lola said, shaking her head wisely, “Some old people, honestly. My Aunt Jean was like that.”

“I think … I wonder if maybe she’s losing her vision?” Selena swung her head toward her younger sister, Diane, who sat in the rocking chair on her right, wearing a bright red dress, her long legs crossed at the knees, her head resting as if she were exhausted against the patterned wooden back of the chair.

“It’s like a plague,” Margaret said. “But I seen it before,” and sighed, pursing her lips.

“We sprayed for them three times last summer and we’ve got more this year than last, Lola said, and the spray killed our dog.”

“Not that big black one? Paddy? Oh, no,” somebody commiserated,
while Lola nodded, and murmurs of dismay and sympathy spread around the room.

“It’s in our drinking water, it’s in the air, it’s everywhere,” Margaret said, a touch smugly.

Ruth said, her voice tinged with a sadness that seemed to go deeper than the conversation warranted, “I don’t know where it will all end.”

“The end of the world, eh?” Selena’s sister-in-law, Rhoda, said, laughing, as if all of this were only more old wives’ tales. Selena noticed Rhoda was wearing new glasses, stylish ones, with elaborate arms, curlicued and shiny, and with glittering things in the top corner of each eyepiece. Very nice, she thought, and planned to compliment her when she got the chance.

“Between the dust and the grasshoppers and the spray,” Ella said, “it’s a wonder any of us are left out here.”

“I hope you’re staying locked inside when the municipality sprays the ditches,” Margaret said sternly to Joanne, nodding toward Joanne’s smock-covered rounded stomach.

“Under the bed,” Joanne said, and when nobody laughed, “I’ve heard about the miscarriages. I asked the doctor about them, but he said there’s nothing to worry about.”

There were several hahs, and Rhoda said, her glasses glinting cheerfully, “You’d be better to let Rhea look after you,” and then everybody laughed, although not too hard, and sobered quickly, so that Selena wondered if they had half-meant the laughter or the advice, or if it was just that they had remembered too late that she and Diane were Rhea’s nieces.

Diane barely hears the women chatter all around her.
This
is my life, she thinks, this women’s society. This is what fate has set me into the midst of. She allows herself one slow, cautious look around the room, barely moving her head. No one seems to see her, no one returns her glance. This confirms for her the unreality of this moment, here in Helen’s living room. As she looks at each of them one by one, she is surprised at how they seem set apart each from the other, even though their eyes meet and their voices bounce and touch. She closes her eyes then, and feels her youngest, Cathy, leaning against her feet as she sits, diapered, on the floor in front of her. She has moments when she cannot believe she has become the mother of two children.

“Ladies,” Helen called. She was seated now at the far end of the dining room table with Enid on her left. Immediately, hearing the authority in her voice, Selena and the other women rose and pulled their chairs around to face the table.

Phyllis helped Margaret turn the heavy armchair. “If we don’t get started right away, we’ll all be late with supper,” she said.

“Let them make their own supper,” Rhoda said, and everybody burst out laughing. Beside Helen, Enid took the cap off her pen, spread her notebook open in front of her, and assumed a solemn expression.

“Queenié’s not here,” Selena said.

“She phoned to say Ross needed her for something or other.” Helen peered over the women’s heads, searching for Diane. “Aren’t you coming up here?” she asked. Everyone turned to look at Diane, who sat rocking slowly, her thick, dark brown hair spread out against the chairback.

“I can give my report from here,” Diane answered, still not lifting her head.

Two little girls suddenly emerged from under the table where they had been crouching, their cotton slacks creased at the knees. One of them perched silently on the arm of Margaret’s chair. Joanne called, “Lana, come here,” to the other. Helen paused again, her lips pursed, while Lana went to Joanne and stood in front of her mother, one finger in her mouth, her knees locked and her small stomach jutting out, watching the other women with a wide-eyed, speculative gaze, while Joanne replaced the barrette in her smooth yellow hair.

“She’s got knowing eyes, that one,” Margaret remarked, nodding wisely.

“She’s cute,” Ella said, smiling at Lana. “Just like her brother.” She sighed. “Before you know it, she’ll be helping serve at the Fowl Supper.”

“And we’ll be putting on her wedding supper …”

Helen opened her mouth to speak, but there was a scream from the kitchen followed by a wail in a different key. Two children, then. Lola leaned forward, past the television set, and looked around the room. Not seeing her child, she got up and disappeared into the kitchen. In a second she was back in the doorway.

“Phyllis?” Phyllis rose quickly and went into the kitchen with her. In the
lull Selena noticed that Diane had begun silently picking at the fabric of her full red skirt, where it smoothed itself over her knees. She wanted to reach out and cover Diane’s busy hands with her own, to quiet them, as she would have done if Diane had been her daughter. She forced her eyes away and turned back to the meeting with a surge of exasperation. How she hated these meetings, boring and long-winded and inconsequential, with all their petty quarrelling and back-biting. She had to laugh at herself, remembering how eager she always was to come to them. We do good work, she reminded herself. What we do is needed here. If it wasn’t for us, the community would fall apart. Still, she preferred doing the actual work to attending the long meetings about it. Probably all of them did, she thought.

“The agenda today,” Helen began again. “We have to make plans for Louise and Barclay’s twenty-fifth …”

“When is it?” A chorus of voices.

“The end of July.”

“And we have to set a date now for the Fowl Supper so we can get a good time when there aren’t fifty other things going on.”

“Yeah, like rock concerts and dances and everybody else’s Fowl Suppers …”

“Shshsh.” Rhoda was hushed by several women at once. She dropped her head, flushing.

“And we have to look over the bills for the spring Dine and Dance and get authorization to pay them. Then … there are a few more items.” She consulted a sheet of paper in front of her. “Classes for community college this winter, some fund-raising, and … so on.”

Lola returned, carrying a small boy still in diapers in her arms. Phyllis followed, steering ahead of her a toddler munching on a cookie. They tiptoed to their chairs and sat down, Lola still holding her son on her lap, while Phyllis’s little boy folded his plump legs and landed with a soft bump on the carpet, his cookie still in his mouth. The little girl perched on the arm of Margaret’s chair suddenly abandoned her and went to Diane.

“Mommy …”

“Shsh,” Diane hushed her. She leaned then, up against her mother’s legs, watching the women seated at the table. Selena watched Diane, who
was staring at her daughter’s back without reaching out to touch her. She wanted to say, forget whatever it is, just for a minute. Forget it, Diane. But she knew this was not the moment and she stopped herself from leaning over and whispering in Diane’s ear. She turned back to Helen.

Diane cannot comprehend how it is that this child, this little girl, grew out of that baby she once was, the baby she brought out of her own body. This little girl, ready for school in the fall, already, when it seems she was just born. Diane feels her own life slipping away from her, fears it will be gone in a smear of empty, busy years. She wants her life to slow down, give her a chance to see it, to figure out what it means, what she should be doing. She studies Tammy’s narrow back, the way the tendons of her neck, so thin and delicate, swell faintly under the exquisite skin of her neck. She feels such tenderness for her daughter, it breaks her heart to think that this small girl will be a woman soon.

Helen forged on.

“Enid, the minutes of the last meeting, please.”

Enid rose and began to read. Selena noted the new pink dress with the heavy, padded shoulders. Ah, she’s young, she can wear it, she thought. A young girl can wear anything. She glanced across the row to Phyllis in last year’s lightweight, flowered cotton, noticing how it was all wrong for Phyllis’s long, muscled body. Phyllis’s hands were clasped on her knees and against the tiny pink and blue flowers they looked painfully rough and red. Enid’s voice quavered with nervousness and Selena brought her attention back to the young woman. Enid had become a member only the fall before, after her wedding to Malcolm. That stupid Malcolm, Selena thought, but she’ll make him grow up.

Diane moves her eyes to Enid, watches how she flushes prettily now and then, trying to say the right thing, trying to be womanly, yet modest, as befits the young. Diane sees Enid’s eyes going soft as she looks across the room and through those annoying curtains to the long, hazy field beyond. So Diane knows it is Malcolm she is thinking of, her new husband, the one she loves, the one she can barely believe loves her too, knows Enid is remembering the joy of their nights after the door is closed and the day’s work forgotten.

“Treasurer’s report. Diane?” Helen’s voice was steady, business-like, as if she didn’t disapprove of Diane’s refusal to sit with the rest of the executive at the table. Diane turned her head slowly, cleared her throat in a soft, tentative way, but didn’t stand. Tammy, leaning against her knees, stared back at all the women who were staring at her mother with expressions ranging from puzzlement to stern disapproval. Abruptly, she turned and buried her face in Diane’s lap. Diane’s hand crept out to rest on Tammy’s head. Cathy, sitting on the floor by her feet, threw one fat arm upward, then brought it down gaily.

“I forgot the account book,” Diane said. Again Helen pursed her lips, then released them.

“Could you maybe give us a quick rundown of our position? Whatever you can remember.” Helen had begun brusquely, but in mid-sentence had smoothed all the irritation out of her tone, so that Selena dropped her eyes and blushed for Diane. No secrets here. Anyone who had eyes to see could tell that something was wrong with Diane. The women sat motionless; the children, sensing the emotion in the air, were for once silent.

“I think,” Diane said, “that we have about four hundred and fifty left in the bank. We just broke even on the Dine and Dance.” She stopped, and it was apparent she had said all she could be bothered to say. A cat meowed plaintively on the deck just outside the screen door, and a truck could be heard passing down the grid. Tammy suddenly lifted her head from her mother’s knee, pushed herself away, and ran into the kitchen, giving two little skips as she reached the door.

“Oh, no.” Phyllis sniffed, then bent forward, scooped up her cookie-smeared son, made her way past the women and disappeared into the hallway that led to the bedrooms and bathroom.

“One day you’re changing their diapers, and the next day, they’re telling you what to do,” Margaret said. There was an amused silence, a few giggles.

“Now, Louise and Barclay’s twenty-fifth. Floor is open for discussion.” Helen laboured on.

“Well,” Ruth said. Everyone turned to look at her, faintly surprised. She had been a member of the club for thirty years, yet she rarely spoke
at the meetings, except privately, in conversations. “I’m not so sure they’ll want one.” There was a puzzled silence.

“Why not?” Helen asked. Nobody spoke, and in the silence the coffee urn in the kitchen bubbled, reminding them all of the passage of time. The odour of perked coffee drifted into the too warm room and Cathy clapped her little hands together and crowed, so that all the women smiled at her.

“Because,” Ruth said, “the situation over there is pretty serious. That’s probably why she isn’t there today.” She paused, them murmured as if to herself, “You kinda lose heart.” There was another long silence. “She was over yesterday afternoon. That’s how I know.”

“The bank?” Joanne asked, faltering a little. Ruth nodded.

“That was her father’s place,” Margaret scolded.

“Can we have some cookies?” Lana asked, standing in front of Lola. Lola hushed her, nodding and shifting her head to see around her daughter.

“How bad is it?” she asked Ruth.

“Buck said he was in Antelope on Wednesday and he saw them both coming out of the bank there. They looked pretty worried, he said. And then he drove on over to Chinook to see about some fertilizer at the Pool there and who should he see coming out of the Credit Union but Louise and Barc.” There were murmurs of dismay around the room. You only went around from bank to bank like that if you were looking for money and nobody would give it to you.”

“How much land have they got?” Joanne asked.

“Six, eight quarters,” Rhoda said. “Not enough.”

“I don’t see how we can not give them a twenty-fifth,” Helen said. “They might not feel much like celebrating, but how would they feel if we just let their anniversary pass and didn’t do anything?”

“We could always freeze the baking,” Ella pointed out, “if something happens and we have to call it off.” Phyllis sniffed the air again.

“Oh, no.” She rose, picking up her son, and carried him out of the room.

“Has he got diarrhea?” Ella asked.

“Just started,” Phyllis called, out of sight in the hallway.

Selena found herself again watching Diane. She was looking through the curtain to the yard beyond, at the row of steel bins which
was almost too bright to look at in the full sun. A breeze crept through the screen door beside her and stirred the curtain so that it floated up against her head.