Then I knew the source of our problem, the barrier that would always be there. I could be her companion, a confidant, an occasional lover, a witness to her aging process and finally her death, but I would never be the one, because he had already disappeared up a funnel into infinity.
“Why the look?” she said. “You don’t think God did that to my father?”
“I’ve never understood the great mysteries, Jo.”
She sat on a stool, her shoulders slumped. “I can’t get the children out of my mind. I see the screams on their faces. I thought if I told the world what happened to them, it would make a difference.” A wet line slid down from each of her eyes. “I don’t know how human beings can be so cruel.”
“Molly Brown was on one of the Titanic lifeboats,” I said. “The water was full of drowning and freezing people. Everyone else on the boat, including a ship’s officer, was afraid to row among them. Molly Brown was the only one who wanted to go back. Three years later, she walked the picket line at Ludlow. She never gave up on her fellow man.”
Jo Anne got off the stool. Her face was inches from mine. “You were not thinking about Molly Brown or my paintings. Don’t pretend you were.”
“Pardon?”
“Don’t lie, Aaron. Every thought you have is always on your face.”
“I asked you to marry me. I never got an answer. Silence makes people think the worse.”
Her eyes hazed over. “You thought I insulted God?”
“No, I did not think that.”
“Then what did you think?”
“You’re already spoken for. No man will replace your father.”
Her face was like a sheet of white paper with nothing written on it. “That’s the most invasive and arrogant statement anyone has ever said to me.”
The phone rang. She picked up the receiver and placed it to her ear, her face dilated with anger. She handed the receiver to me. “It’s for the ice cream guy,” she said.
* * *
“WHAT’S COOKING, STONEY?”
“Bad haps, man.” His voice was like fingernails on a blackboard. “They’re gonna do it again. You gotta come get me.”
“Who’s going to do what again?”
“What they did to Moon Child.”
“You got to spell it out, Stoney.”
“They got a ceremony up in the rocks. It’s dark even when the sun’s out. You’re not gonna believe it. I didn’t because I was on acid. Acid is no good, man.”
I could hear diesel engines huffing and airbrakes blowing in the background. “Tell me where you are.”
“In the phone booth.”
“Which phone booth? What’s the closest town?”
“I don’t know.”
“What brand of gas do they sell there?”
“It’s gas, ice cream guy. Fuck. My head hurts.”
“Who’s at the ceremony? Just give me one name.”
“It’s not one person. It’s the devil. No. A bunch of them. All with the same face.”