Luna (3 page)

She raised one hand absently and brushed it down, then folded both hands across her abdomen. Seeing this gesture, Selena wondered, is she pregnant again? No, that’s not possible, she thought, Diane had sworn that she would die before she’d have another child, two were more than enough, she had said, two were too many. Selena had been deeply shocked when Diane had said that, and even now, remembering, the same emotion stirred deep inside her. She couldn’t understand how any woman could feel that way.

Diane knows Selena is studying her, but she doesn’t turn her head to meet her sister’s eyes. Poor Selena, she thinks, how little it takes to satisfy her, as if she is only partly alive. Like Margaret. To wind up like Margaret, a shadow of a woman—old and shallow and empty. Diane would like to let herself sink irrevocably into this sucking lethargy she feels, but when she holds her baby in her arms, she thinks, not yet. Still, she cannot understand, in the face of everything, why her love for Tony, her love for her children, is not enough.

“We’ll set up a lunch committee right now,” Helen said. “Who’s going to write them a song? You, Selena? Will Phoebe play the piano for us? Diane, you always do the best skits, can you think up one for Louise and Bare?”

The meeting moved on to other subjects while the children played around the room, giggled or whined, nagged their mothers and each other, kissed the babies to everybody’s delight and pinched them when nobody was looking, though everybody knew it by the wide-eyed look on the offender’s face and the surprise in the baby’s howl. At last it was time for lunch.

Women rose, changed seats, went to the bathroom, settled children, went to the kitchen to help with lunch and serve it. Selena bent down and picked up Cathy. The child was getting sleepy and she leaned back against Selena’s chest. Selena smoothed her fine, curly hair with her palm, enjoying the warmth of her body and the silkiness of her hair. Before she had time to suppress the impulse, she found herself longing for another baby of her own.

She turned to Diane and said, with more intensity than she had meant, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Diane said. Selena could see her making an effort to collect herself. “The crop’s looking really poor. If it would just rain.”

“Maybe you and Tony should take a holiday,” Selena suggested. “Spring work’s done, and I’d be glad to take the kids for you.” Diane made a noise that might have been a laugh, or a smothered sob.

“Tell me what’s the matter,” Selena pleaded.

“Rhea has a remedy for diarrhea that never fails,” Ella called across the room to Phyllis.

“I don’t know,” Diane said, after a pause, looking away from Selena. She sounded almost angry.

“I’d appreciate it if anybody who has any ideas for community college classes for the fall would let me know,” Phyllis called over the chatter. “We have to get in our requests pretty soon.”

“Microwave cooking,” Rena suggested. Again Diane made that peculiar sound in her throat.

“What about that class they had last year in Antelope?” Lola asked. “The one everybody was talking about. Farm stress, or something.”

“Stress management,” Helen corrected her.

“You have good ideas,” Phyllis said, turning to Diane. “What do you think?” For a moment Selena thought Diane was not going to answer. She drew in her breath slowly.

“What’s the point?” she asked, and the room grew quiet. “Crocheting, embroidery, wheat-weaving, sewing mukluks …” Tentatively, Ella spoke.

“It’s just … entertainment. It passes the winter.”

“But is that all it’s for?” Diane asked. She sat up abruptly and looked around the room as if she were angry at all of them.

“I think they’re darn good,” Lola said, bristling at the implied criticism. “I’ve learned lots in those classes.”

“Flower arranging, cake decorating.” Diane’s voice was filled with scorn.

“You tell us what we ought to have, then,” Phyllis said, too vehemently. “You’ve been on the committee. You know nobody will come to academic classes.”

Diane searches for the words that will explain to them what it is that makes her ache so, with a yearning that feels as though it will never be stopped. She wants to tell them something, she wants to use words they will recognize, identify what each of them knows secretly, but will never acknowledge out loud. But all she can think of is Rhea telling her: sometimes I would cry for days at a time. I looked after the children, I cooked the meals, weeded and hoed the garden, carried water to it, made cheese and canned beef, washed the clothes and hung them on the line to dry. And all the while—all that spring or all that fall—tears ran out of my eyes and down my cheeks, dripped off my chin into the dishwater or washwater, or onto the cabbage leaves I was hoeing, or the clean clothes I was ironing. I never willed them to start. I couldn’t make them stop. One morning I’d wake and they’d be seeping out of me, and they would seep for days.

Unexpectedly Ruth said, “I know what she means.” Her voice was too loud in the sunbright, crowded room. “You go on day after day, year after year. The kids grow up. You find yourself thinking, there must be something more. There must be.” She stared from woman to woman. “Do you know what I mean?” Nobody answered her.

Selena thought, ah well, she’d be the one to say that. Buck drinking too much all the time, mean with her when he’s drunk, they say.

“Well,” Phyllis said, her brightness a new note in air heavy with unspoken words. “I don’t know what the college can do about that.”

“Lord, when I first came here,” Margaret intervened, “when I was young as you,” she indicated Phyllis with her chin, “we’d have given anything just to get together once in a while.” She shook her head, reflecting. “It was so lonesome. You can’t imagine how lonesome it was. How do you think Rhea got the way she is?” She lifted her head at this, her eyes suddenly fierce, then laughed, a little embarrassed. “Just to get together every once in a while for a class still seems like a miracle to me.”

The conversation went on around them, but Selena had stopped listening. She would have to talk with Diane, see if she could find some way to help. Soon Lola was rising, packing the cracked vinyl diaper bag Selena remembered giving her at her baby shower when Lana was born. Phyllis was gathering her baby’s things and Joanne was rising clumsily from her chair.

“Heavens,” Selena said, looking at her watch. “I’ve still got to get Phoebe. She’ll be having a fit.”

“Where is she?” Diane asked, lifting Cathy onto her hip.

“Playing softball in Chinook. The bus is only coming as far as Mallard, so I said I’d drive in and pick her up. Here, I’ll carry Cathy out to the car.”

They went out together in the midst of the crowd of women, all calling good-byes, reminding one another of this and that, exclaiming about the heat and the dust and one more time about the grasshoppers. Selena settled Cathy into her car seat, kissed her, then stood back so that Tammy could climb in beside her little sister. Diane got in behind the wheel and turned the key.

“Diane?” Selena asked, leaning in the window.

“What?” Diane asked, turning her head toward Selena too quickly, frowning, then hurriedly turning back again, as if she were embarrassed by her own bad temper.

“Come over tomorrow morning. Kent’s going to Swift Current for baler parts. We can talk.”

Diane stared ahead out the windshield, a faint flush rising in her thin cheeks. Selena thought she would burst out in anger again, or not answer at all, or cry, but after a moment, Diane said simply, “Okay.” She shifted into gear and began to inch the car away. Hastily Selena withdrew her hand.

The yard was filling up with dust as one by one the vehicles drove away. A grasshopper landed on Selena’s shoulder, then leaped away before she could brush at it. The crops will be burning up, she thought, peering through the haze at the long, pale fields, and it’s only June. She got into her truck and drove through the dust out of the yard, turned right at the end of the approach, and headed toward Chinook, twenty-five miles to the north.

Phoebe was leaning by herself against the brick wall of the high school when Selena pulled up. The schoolyard was deserted, but it seemed for a moment that Phoebe, lost in thought, had not noticed her mother’s arrival. Selena leaned over, a little puzzled since Phoebe had never been given to periods of deep thought, and opened the door on the passenger
side. Phoebe jumped then, smiled at Selena, then as quickly wiped the smile away.

“It took you long enough,” she said.

“I got held up,” Selena apologized, then annoyed, said, “You’re lucky I came at all. You could have taken the bus as far as Mallard.” Phoebe didn’t answer. As Selena turned the truck out of town, she set her schoolbooks down on the seat between them.

“How was the meeting?” she asked humbly, as if to make up for her rudeness.

“Oh, you know,” Selena said, although Phoebe had never been to one of the meetings, not since she was a preschooler. “Pretty boring, but we’re starting to plan for Louise’s twenty-fifth. They want you to play the piano. Okay?” Phoebe shrugged.

“Sure.” She sighed and sat back, looking out the passenger’s window. “Can we shorten my dress tonight?” Selena nodded without speaking. “Grad’s next week,” Phoebe pointed out in a sulky tone, as if Selena had refused.

“Tonight’s lots of time,” Selena said in a soothing voice, then remembering how Phoebe hated her to use that tone, she said quickly, “When do the boys pick up their suits?”

“They’re not wearing rented suits,” Phoebe said, her surprise changing to annoyance. “It isn’t a wedding.”

Has Brian got his yet?” Selena asked, willing herself to keep her voice friendly.

“He got it last weekend,” Phoebe said. “I told you. It’s a pale sort of blue-grey tweed. It looks really nice on him.”

“Oh, that should really look nice with your dress,” Selena said.

“I gave him and his mother a little piece of cloth from my dress so they could make sure they’d go together. There’s a deeper blue fleck in the tweed that’s exactly the same colour as my dress.”

“Queenie’s good about things like that.”

“It’s no big deal,” Phoebe said, offended now. “It didn’t hurt her, and anyway, Brian said he wanted to.”

This last couple of months talking with Phoebe was like going for a
stroll in a minefield. Phoebe read mistrust, or accusation, or laughter at her expense, into every remark. Selena tried to remember if she had been like that at seventeen. But her own mother was dead by then, and she had been a mother herself, trying to raise her little sister.

“What about corsages?” she asked, just to keep Phoebe talking to her.

“Oh, Mom, I told you,” Phoebe wailed. “It’s either pink or yellow carnations. I decided to have yellow.” It was all Selena could do not to snap at Phoebe now. She reminded herself, it’s a hard time in her life, it’s scary—graduation from high school, the end of her childhood. Thinking about it, she felt overwhelmed by all the things Phoebe was facing, including what would happen to her relationship with her boyfriend once she left for university in the fall. They had turned onto the blacktop road now where there was not dust, and she rolled down her window to let in the fresh air.

“The windshield’s sure a mess,” Phoebe remarked. She forgot her little flareups as fast as they happened. Selena relaxed. She had been thinking for some time that she should have a talk with Phoebe about grad night. She had told Kent she would, had made him promise he would say nothing if she would talk to Phoebe.

“Phoebe,” she said, then stopped, frowning.

“What?” Phoebe asked, not looking at her mother, as if she had, that quickly, sensed that the conversation would turn serious. Selena had slowed down without realizing it, and the air rushing through the cab turned softer. A meadowlark sitting on a fencepost called to them as they passed, and the notes had a melancholy tone that Selena had never noticed before. She turned her head to look at her daughter. Phoebe sat quietly, her hands clasped between her thighs, looking ahead, out the grasshopper-smeared window.”

“I was thinking,” Selena said, slowly.

“About what?” Phoebe asked, her tone wary.

“About grad night,” Selena said. “You’ll be out all night …”

“Sure,” Phoebe said, confident now that if there was to be an argument about this, she would win easily. “That’s the way it is. It was that way when you graduated, wasn’t it?” Selena didn’t say anything. “You mean, will
there be drinking? Sure, some. You can’t stop that, not even with that Safe Grad stuff.” She turned her head away with what might have been stubbornness or even triumph, but the gesture seemed to Selena to hold a touch of fear. So it worries her, too, she thought. They were driving past dry fields covered with mats of short, dusty crops that were just beginning to turn green. “Lorna May’s pregnant,” Phoebe said suddenly.

For an instant Selena couldn’t respond. What is she telling me? she wondered, and then thought, Mary and Bill’s oldest, the pretty one with the dark red hair.

“Oh, no,” she said, a soft sound, filled involuntarily with dismay.

“She’ll probably have an abortion,” Phoebe said, as if it was nothing. “She’s only seventeen and she was planning to go into nursing in the fall.”

“Who’s the father?” Selena asked, a little timidly. Phoebe shrugged.

“Paul, I suppose. He’s been her boyfriend since grade ten.”

“How’s she taking it?” Phoebe shrugged again, refusing to look at her mother.

“She doesn’t act any different.” She paused. “Nobody’s supposed to know.” They both laughed a little at this.

“But you’d think in this day and age …” Selena began.

“What?” Belligerence again.

“Nothing. It’s just that—it doesn’t have to happen anymore, and still it does …” But never to you, Phoebe, oh God, never to you, Selena prayed. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel.

“Most of the girls sleep with their boyfriends,” Phoebe said. She tossed this out casually, in a dreamy voice, as if she were talking to herself. Selena turned her head quickly again to look at her daughter. Why had Phoebe said this of all things to her? And why now? She was overwhelmed with things she wanted to say, but uppermost was: Do you? but as quickly as she wondered this, she knew the answer. No, not yet. There was still something in her manner…. Selena could see the childishness in the plump curve of her cheeks, and in the way she still slept at night, deeply, innocently, like a five-year-old. Even though she had developed the full figure of a woman, even though she had bled now every month for almost five years, Phoebe was still a child.