The Moon Sisters Read Online Free PDF Page B

come close to an answer when asking myself, What’s the problem here? Why the lump of discomfort in my chest? It was all but impossible in the midst of one of my sister’s jabberfests.
    Olivia was like a CD with only three tracks. My job at the funeral home, track No. 1. Ghost lights and the bog, track No. 2. And the latest track in the Olivia Moon collection, track No. 3: the trip itself.
    “Jazz, what’s the last town we passed?”
    “I don’t know,” I told her, as I began to shift the bus into another lane. A horn blared out at me, and I pulled back, wondered when the car had surged into my blind spot.
    From behind me I heard, “Careful.”
    “I am being careful,” I snapped, as my anxiety ratcheted up another notch and a pain was born in my forehead. I rubbed it with two fingers as the driver of the car drove past and graced me with a finger of her own. This wasn’t what bothered me.
    Why do I feel this way?
    My apprehensions increased with every mile, as we continued our drive south, past small towns, and back and forth over switchback roads. When we rounded a bend, the sun stabbed at my eyes. I tried turning my face to avoid it, sat taller, but it was no use. I couldn’t even wear my crappy sunglasses—the ones with the lens that popped out at random times—because they made it harder to see through the bugs splattered all over the windshield. White bugs, yellow bugs, green. The wipers didn’t help; they just spread those bugs around the glass like insect frosting on a cake inscribed “Jazz’s Shitty Day.” I was out of wiper fluid.
    “What do you think the bog looks like?” Olivia asked as my eyes watered.
    “I don’t know. A bog.”
    “I wonder if it’ll taste like cranberries.”
    It hurt to roll my eyes.
    Olivia stayed on track No. 2 for a while (“Did you know bodies don’t decompose in bogs? There might be a two-hundred-year-old corpse under a dozen feet of soaked plant bits out there, perfectly preserved!”), then skipped back to No. 1 (“Will you be in charge of ordering things like the makeup they use on dead people?”).
    “Please shut up,” I said, trying not to think about my mother. The Velveeta-toned foundation on her skin, the pink lipstick and the slash of blue shadow. The deep-green blouse, the black skirt barelyvisible beneath the shut lower half of the coffin. Her hair straightened, arranged in a smooth fall of chestnut over one shoulder. That day I had to remind myself that she was laid there; she didn’t lay herself there. She was not asleep.
    Why would I want to return to that place?
    Why? Olivia had asked. Why? Why?
    Are you sure this is what you want? Babka had asked. Is it what you need?
    I’d driven back one cold, rainy day in late spring—taken the bus without telling anyone, without honestly knowing where I was going. I drove to Kennaton, past the university that always made my skin itch—the scene of my mother’s liaison with my father, and her disownment from her former family—until I found myself outside Rutherford & Son. I parked on the street, right behind a hearse, and didn’t care how it looked. Sloshed through a wide puddle on the walkway, and strode up stairs framed by tall bushes. Stalled at the front door with my hand on the old-fashioned knob.
    Need help?
    A man stood a few paces away, on a wraparound cement patio. He smoked a cigarette, and wore a fluorescent orange T-shirt coated in short white animal hairs. He didn’t strike me as a cat person.
    You here to set up a service? he asked.
    No , I said, I’m not here to set up a service .
    He opened his fingers, and his cigarette fell. He crushed it against the cement with one booted foot. You here for the job, then?
    What job?
    He smiled, his brow quirked in confusion. Why are you here?
    I don’t know , I said, and sniffed. My nose had begun to run. I bounced on my feet, tried to disguise a shiver as the man in the T-shirt looked at me and shrugged.
    All right , he said. Let’s go inside.