There was still some of that fear in her as she looked up at the moon now. Her rational mind told her that it was merely earth's satellite, a dead, inanimate orb reflecting back the refracted light of the sun, but on a deeper, more visceral level she could not help feeling a little intimidated by it, as though, like the moon in a children's book, it was sentient and possessed some sort of magic that could affect her life.
The feeling was strange but not unpleasant, and she was grateful that even the cold facts of astronomy had not been able to completely dissolve for her the mystery of the night sky.
Penelope looked over at her mother. 'Do you like looking at the moon?'
she asked. 'Looking at stars?'
Her mother smiled. 'Sometimes.'
Her father had liked to look at the stars.
Or so her mothers had told her.
She found herself thinking of her father. She did not think of him often, and sometimes she felt guilty about that, but she had not really known him; to her he had been little more than a face in an old photograph. He'd been a handsome man, that she knew. Tall and broad-shouldered, with longish brown hair and a mustache, he looked in his picture as if he could be either a carpenter or a college professor.
There was about him that appearance of both intelligence and physicality which suggested that he was equally at home with books and tools, adept at both mental and manual labor; a romantic assumption which was born out by the descriptions of her mothers.
When she was younger, her mothers had talked about her father a lot, answering her myriad questions, invoking his perceived wishes in regard to discipline and learning, endeavoring to make his presence felt through affectionate stories and detailed reminiscences. But as she'd grown older, the talk had ceased, as if her father had been an imaginary entity like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, invented to aid a period of her development, as if the spectre of his life had performed its function and outlived its usefulness. By the time she'd hit her teens, the subject of her father seldom, if ever, came up in discussion, and her infrequent questions concerning him were often redirected elsewhere.
It was all very confusing to her, and sensing the shift in attitude, she had stopped mentioning him at all. Gradually, the details of her father's life began to blur and fade, blending in with the other secondhand stories of childhood.
The details of his death, however, remained sharp and clear.
Her father had been killed shortly after she'd beerf born, brutally murdered, torn apart in the wild woods beyond the fence by a stray band of rabid wolves. She knew the story by heart. It had been spring, late April, and her father had gone out for one of the evening strolls he enjoyed so much. Mother Felice and Mother Sheila had been preparing dinner in the kitchen, with Mother Janine watching television in the next room. Mother Margeaux had been in the office with Mother Margaret.
All of them, even Mother Margeaux and Mother Margaret, had heard the screams, and all had come running out, only to see the gray-white blur of wolves savagely attacking a human figure on the dirt path which led between the tall trees. The screams had already stopped, but though it was night, they could clearly see in the distance the fall of her father's upraised arm, the sleeve of his yellow shirt torn and streaked black with blood.
Mother Janine had screamed, and Mother Margeaux had rushed into the house for the rifle, ordering Mother Felice to call the police. Mother Margeaux had led the charge across the meadow, firing into the air, and the wolves had fled, scattering and disappearing into the woods.
There had been nothing left of her father's face. His chest had been chewed open, his entrails devoured, and large chunks of his arms had been bitten off. Only his legs, for some reason, had sustained minor injuries.
The six of them had carried his body back to the house themselves, his cooling blood dripping down their arms an dover their clothes, and waited for the ambulance to arrive.
, The tale had been told to her and retold hundreds of times, and looking back now, Penelope wondered why her mothers had felt compelled to dwell on the end of her father's life, why they had insisted on telling a small child such a horrifying story. For it had been horrifying. And frightening. And her mothers had always gone into gruesome detail in their descriptions of the blood and the body. She had had a series of ultra-vivid recurring nightmares in which her mothers had killed her father. What, she wondered now, had she been meant to learn from all that?
She didn't know.
But she knew that her life would probably be a lot less confusing if her father was still alive.
Mother Felice nudged her elbow, stood up. 'Come on,' she said. 'Let's go inside. It's getting late.'
'But it's a Friday,' Penelope said. 'It's not a school night.'
'You still have a lot of chores to do tomorrow. Besides, your other mothers will be wondering where we snuck off to.'
'Let them wonder, then.'
Her mother laughed. 'You want me to tell that to Mother Margeaux?'
'No,' Penelope admitted.
'Come on, then.'
Reluctantly, Penelope stood. She followed her mother into the house.
He dreamed of high hills, white outcroppings of rock punctuating the dull green of late summer meadow grass. There were no houses or buildings hi sight, no roads, only a thin, slightly worn dirt path which looked as though it had been formed by the continued passage of animal hooves. To the right, the path wound up the nearest hill toward the summit. To the left, it meandered toward a stand of trees in the flat bottom of a gently sloping valley.
He walked barefoot across the ground toward the path, rocky gravel beneath the grass digging deep into his heel and sole but not hurting.
The air was hot but not humid, dry and desertlike, the sky above a light pastel, bleached by the sun.
He felt good. His senses were heightened; he could see clearly for miles, he could hear the rickety click of insects moving in the grass, he could smell the heavy, warm, comforting odor of dirt and on top of that the lighter scent of growing weeds and grasses.
He realized that he was very tall.
He reached the path and turned toward the valley and the trees. The warm dirt felt smooth on his feet, and he began to walk faster, suddenly anxious to arrive at his destination. On his tongue he tasted the faint remembrance of grape, and for some reason that spurred his interest in hurrying.
Ahead he saw movement on the path, smelled the fetid odor of an unwashed animal. He reached the spot and stopped. On the path before him was a goat, a she-goat, breasts heavy with milk. He found that he was thirsty, and he lifted the animal until its multiple teats were above his face.
He took three in his mouth and began suckling. The warm, sweet milk slid smoothly down his thirsty throat.
When he was finished, he put the goat down, and he noticed for the first time that next to it, just off the edge of the path, was the body of its kid. Or what remained of its kid. The small goat had been killed, gutted, mutilated, and sharp wooden sticks protruded from the bloody wreckage of its torso. Its legs and head had been ripped, off and tossed aside. Small segments of skin, tufts of bloody hair, hung from the low, sturdy stalks of grass.
He knew that this meant he was getting close to home, and it made him feel good.
He heard screams from the trees, screams of joy and pain, and, smiling, he began to run toward them.
Dion spent Saturday with his mom, the two of them unpacking the last of their belongings, making adjustments to what was supposed to have been the final rearrangement of the living room. The work was monotonous, but Dion enjoyed doing it. Particularly since his mom seemed to be having a good time. Instead of moaning and complaining, making a big show of how much she hated doing domestic labor the way she usually did, she put on some records--Beatles and Beach Boys, music they could both agree on--and sang along as she dusted and cleaned the items she unpacked. She had been home from work on time both Thursday and Friday, acting like Holly Housewife, cooking dinner, cleaning dishes, watching television, making a visible effort to gain his trust, and she was low-key and conscientious in both her work and her conversation today, clearly trying to show him that things really had changed. He was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. It was obvious from the effort she was making that she'd meant what she'd said, that she really did want things to be different.
Everything was going to be okay.
