The Melting Season

I needed sleep.

 

The comforter on the bed was brown and there were tiny cartoon trains all over it. It itched my skin when I slid underneath it. I put my head down and slept for an hour. When I woke my hair was dry and clean. I felt rested. I still had the same feeling as when I was driving, that something was going to happen, but now it could go either way. I thought about playing hide-and-seek with my sister, Jenny, when we were still kids, her barely reading her storybooks by herself, me on the verge of being a teenager. I would always hide from her. This was how I babysat. Nothing too fancy. I hid, she ran around the house yelling my name. Boy, could she hustle. But she loved it, it was her favorite game to play, and I guess I did not mind it that much either. I remember sitting in the closet, her about to open the door. I never knew what I was going to do. I could pounce or I could scream or I could jump in the air and laugh. But something had to happen next.

 

I put on a few layers of clothes. I missed my summertime tan, and my short skirts, and how happy and free the air on my skin made me feel. I brushed my hair. It was blond and thick and spread out over my shoulders and down my back to my waist. My crown of glory, just as it had been for years. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was thinner, like a scrawny child now, tiny bones, my flesh lost to stress and misery. But I had the same face, and my beloved hair. I still looked like me. Only I was not Moonie Madison anymore.

 

I had been Moonie since high school. When Thomas first fell in love with me, he named me that. I was his moon, and he was my stars, that is the way it was right from the beginning. Just like that I was Moonie. No one else. During our wedding Thomas even said, “I take you, Moonie—I mean Catherine,” and everyone laughed. But it was all true. I did not even remember who I was before I met him.

 

And now I was not Moonie anymore. Catherine did not feel too right either. I had already stopped being Catherine. I was going to have to sort out a whole new me.

 

I left the room and locked the door behind me. The door next to mine cracked open, and I saw a woman watching me. I thought maybe she was like me for a second, traveling alone. But then the door swung open and a little boy came running out. He was a toddler, wearing just diapers on his bottom half and a sweater on top. The woman plucked him up and clutched him to her chest. I could not decide how old she was. Everything about her looked the same as me, except for her forehead. There were lines carved into it like rivers in the earth. I wondered what it would feel like, to rub my hands along those lines. This is how we are different, I thought. I am still smooth, and you are lined. I wondered if she hated having them, or even if she noticed them at all. I wondered if that little boy was why she had those lines, if the love she felt for him was so strong and deep that her face had changed forever. She smiled at me, and then the baby started crying, and she closed the door.

 

I went to the bar. I could not remember ever going to a bar by myself. That seemed like a thing a girl who was looking for trouble would do, and I had never once looked for trouble in my life. The bar was full of men, a few guys younger than me, but most of them were in their forties or older. In the back I saw a couple of women with their husbands, and there was a little girl running around who had sparkly barrettes crooked in her hair. I was sure that everyone knew everyone else. Most people were smoking. In certain parts of the bar the air was so thick with it you could not see people’s faces clearly. I did not want to eat there, but I was starving.

 

I sat at the bar. The stool had a tear in it. The men to the right of me were laughing and seemed harmless enough. They were not any different from the men who came into the diner back home, men who had known me since I was a kid. My father did not take me into bars when I was growing up, but he was not the kind to go out and socialize. Working all day at the pharmacy was enough people time for him. He was not a snob, though, and he did not raise one either. I sat down and ordered a Southern Comfort and Diet Coke from the bartender, a short woman with breasts so big it was like there was no stomach left. They just took over everything. Her lipstick stained the skin around her mouth where age was fading her. She had the same eyes as the girl who had checked me in at the motel. She could be complaining one minute, she could make you laugh the next. You just didn’t know what you would get from her.

 

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