Moon on Fire
By: Deborah Hansen
Tags: Betrayal, Cheating, Love

Moon on Fire

Rain dripped off his clothes onto the tile floor. It formed in pools around his feet, as if he was in a stranger’s house, someplace he didn’t belong. His clothes hung in my closet and his toothbrush was on my sink, but his eyes refused to meet mine.

He led me outside the door where we huddled in the yellow glow of the porch light. Lightning streaked like electric fingers and thunder crashed around us. Who writes a novel this bad, I remember thinking, the night dark and stormy, trees bending as if their backs were going to break? I glimpsed the moon through the scudding clouds, its halo bright in the sky. I shivered in the dampness, but he held himself away from me, stiff, with no offer of the heat I knew lay in his arms. He started to speak, coughed instead and turned away. My fingers reached out to touch him, console him, but he pulled away as if scorched. He faced me again, and this time uttered the betrayal that every lover fears. Fury, searing pain, disbelief roiled through me, my body battered as if muggers assaulted me in a dark alley. The bad novel had just gotten worse.

I choked out strangled sounds, but no words came. Nothing was possible, could ever be possible again, I thought.

“Who is it?” I finally demanded. He flinched.

“Who? I deserve to know.” Didn’t I? But did it matter when the heart is carved out in chunks with a knife of lies? At least the name would be something — someone — to grab onto, to blame for this agony.

He spoke her name and it fell onto the porch between us. I gaped, thinking the Earth had fallen off its axis and was now careening across the galaxy like a pinball in an arcade game. The name he had spoken was that of an earthy woman, someone I knew, we both knew in another context. And she had made no secret that she loved women, not men.

I shook my head in horror. This man who had pursued me desperately barely half a year ago was in love with a woman who lay with women, someone who denied even liking men. My brain shut down, unable to process this madness. This was more than being jilted; this mocked the image I had of myself as a woman. And in that moment of silence, my heart shattered into jagged shards, the pain flooding my being, all those razor-sharp edges tearing me to shreds.

I stumbled inside the door and left him standing there, tears and rain coursing down both our faces. My head fell forward and a strange keening sound rose from deep inside my soul, a place I didn’t know existed. My legs gave way and I collapsed on the floor, my body shaking from shock. Cheap novels start from such places.

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The moonlight snuck into the room, fingers of soft light pulling away the edges of gloom crouched in the corners. My eyelids were swollen shut. How I had ended up here, in bed, was a mystery.

“Mom?” I heard my daughter’s voice through the shadows pressing in on me. My throat was raw as I tried to answer her. And then it came flooding back. The rain, his eyes, my pain.

“Mom? Can we come in?” I sat up and turned toward her voice at the bedroom doorway. She stood there with someone else, two reedy shapes side by side. My vision was blurred, and I couldn’t see who was there. Had he returned? I thought before logic took over, the size of the shadow all wrong.

“Is everything okay, honey?” I finally managed to croak. Attempting to console someone else, my own agony could then be hidden away in a drawer to be examined later. Maybe I had misunderstood him last night, maybe it was a nightmare.

I could see her better now as she stood there with her best friend, another high school girl, a young woman really, both of them ready to burst upon the world, a world that would soon be their stage. They stood close together, their bodies touching from shoulder to thigh. Their hands were entwined, too, I could see that now, fingers locked together. I looked at my daughter’s face, aglow with beauty….and love.

“What is it, sweetie? Did you just get home?” I asked. The ragged pieces of my heart ground inside me again, excruciating. I shook my head but could still hear his words echoing between the lightning and thunder, perfect accompaniments for his message. Her name, his secret, their lie.

“We’re fine, Mom.” They looked at each other and smiled, their happiness a radiant gem held between them. “I need to tell you something.”

I turned toward the window as a bolt of lightning split the sky and the moon burst into flames. Suddenly, I knew what they were about to say.

Originally published in Runcible Spoon.

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