Dancing in Lunar Seas
Part One
I The Coaster
Allison noticed it the moment she walked through the door, automatically scanning the living room as she nudged her flats from each heel with the toe of her other foot. The glass, less than half filled with the semi-transparent brown of the iced tea Allison had made the night before, stood directly on her walnut coffee table, condensation running down the sides, a ring of moisture clearly visible on the polished wood.
I'm going to kill that girl, she muttered, silently praying that her salt trick would work. If I told her once I told her a thousand times.
She quickly retrieved a handful of tissues she kept in her purse, lifted the glass from the table and wiped the condensation from the wooden surface, biting her lower lip. She squinted her eyes, and a breath of relief almost escaped her lips. Then she saw it, faint but unmistakable: a clouded ring of a water stain on her beloved walnut furniture.
That idiot girl. That stupid, stupid girl. All of nineteen and she doesn't have enough sense to use a coaster?
Allison inspected the rest of the living room for signs of her daughter's depredations, but the sight confronting her eyes subdued her rising anxiety. Everything was in order. Books neatly lined the small, short bookshelf standing against one wall, next to a longer library table, also made of carved and polished walnut; she eyed the cushions of the sofas and armchairs and, seeing them neatly fluffed and layered against each other, sighed, noticeably relieved.
The hand-me-down doilies, like giant snowflakes made of fine thread, knitted by her grandmother and passed down to her from her mother, topped the backs of the sofas and chairs, evidently undisturbed by Kristie's slovenliness. All in all, it was a modest, comfortable room, appointed with modest, comfortable furniture and lamps and curtains, for a modest, comfortable house. The fuzzy ring on the coffee table caught Allison's eye, and the woman walked briskly to the kitchen to retrieve a container of salt.
Damn her, she thought, staring out the kitchen window through parted lace hanging over the small window above her sink. She saw her neighbor's yard, so much better kept and trimmed than hers, and then to her neighbor's house, finer and larger than the small ranch house her father had bought for her after Ted abandoned the both of them, Allison and Kristie.
That was all, what, ten years ago now?
Allison stood on her toes to reach the salt in its tubular cartoon. She had worn a longish, dark burgundy dress to work that day, and the hem of the dress rose above her calves, showing the backs of her knees momentarily before she returned, flat-footed to the cold linoleum, patterned as if tile, of the kitchen floor. The dress swirled around the middle of her calves as she walked back to the coffee table to pour a little salt over the hazy ring where the glass had stood.
Ten years ago she had tried so hard.
Ten years ago she could tell herself she was still young and beautiful, even with an eight-year old child. Ten years ago she could still laugh, a laughter tinged with bitterness, at Ted's selfish stupidity. When he left, he left for good, and the door that closed behind him did not shut near as tight as the door in Allison's own heart against her once and futureless husband.
Allison stared at the little ring of salt on her walnut, a little circle to ward off the evil spirits of blemish, and she frowned in her worry. She pulled her eyes from the table to glance out the picture window, slightly bayed, at the derelict majesty of the big white house across the street, a century old and empty for decades, two stories and a gabled attic of domestic ruination threatening at any moment to cave in.
She couldn't call herself young anymore.
She doubted she could still call herself beautiful.
She had gained weight her frumpy dresses couldn't hide, and she had gained something else too. Something more than weight, a cold and harrowing desperation of life slipping by towards its final cataclysm. She could almost see it, a long train moving slowly but irresistibly as she stood on the platform waiting for it to stop to let her on. She knew it wouldn't stop for her.
She knew she'd have to leap as the train passed, and she invested all her worry and all her anxiety on a leap she knew in her heart she'd never take. She was too old to jump; with her luck she'd twist an ankle, or snap it, or worse trip and fall, landing between the platform and the pitiless steel wheels, crushed and mangled, her eyes dying on the sight of shocked and curious onlookers.
She'd never leap, but she could keep a clean and orderly home. For her. And for Kristie.
Somewhere safe, and nice, and pleasant for the girl to come home to.
Even if the damned girl didn't have enough sense to use a coaster.
II The Night
She tried to stay up for Kristie, the old worry refusing to fade, but here again the habits of creeping middle-age held sway, overcoming Allison's maternal anxieties, and she fell asleep shortly after the late night news.
III That Saturday
The next day saw the usual turn of events, the same repetition of Saturdays since Kristie's return from State. The lake for Kristie and her friends, house cleaning and shopping for Allison. The mother didn't expect the daughter home until late in the night, but Kristie was lying on the couch, already in the old baggy sweats she wore for the night, pointing the remote apathetically at the television when Allison walked through the door, home from the mall, a stubborn holdover from the era they reigned as monarchs of consumption society.
"Back from the lake so soon? How did it go? How's Jenny? How's her mother's rhomboids? Are they still acting up?"
Rhomboids were nothing to sneeze at.
Kristie huffed mid-channel, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously.
"How the hell would I know, Mom?"
The sudden flare-up of her daughter's temper didn't surprise her, but she resented the open hostility in her own home.
"Don't talk to me that way."
The tone in her mother's voice told Kristie not to push it.
"I'm sorry, Mom. It's just that. Jenny."
The tone in her daughter's voice told Allison to nudge just a little.
"It's just that Jenny what, honey?" Her voice softened, showing the genuine concern that instantly arose in her. Not to say anything of the inquisitive greed for any kind of gossip. She set her two gift bags on the coffee table, making sure not to disturb the ring of salt. She smiled at seeing the coaster under the plastic tumbler filled with Kristie's soda. No doubt sugar-free.
Kristie bent her legs towards her to allow her mother room to sit on the couch, the she stretched her legs, plopping her feet on Allison's lap. Allison caressed one of Kristie's feet, squeezing her big toe playfully until she saw the little smile play upon her daughter's lips.
"Stop that," Kristie said.
Allison saw the tears and anger in her daughter's eyes.
