Whatever Happened to the Moon?

Whatever Happened to the Moon?

A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton

***

It was the day the moon fell.
A big luscious one shining in a spectacularly dark blue Hollywood like sky studded with small lights, destined to shine.

Like the moon, Pamela's entrance was to be a star number, a song that would convince all her classmates she was someone to count on. She had even helped create the moon she was to sing to. It was a dream come true, maybe even too good to be true.

Copied from astronomy pictures found in the library books, meticulously studied and painted with all the craters and mountains. Maybe Pamela was like that moon with all her low self esteem but rich ideas, insecure autism and apprehension but deep faith.

The wood was sponsored by Greenwood, Indiana's top lumber yard, Roachdale Barnes Supplies. The large wooden circle had already been cut for a huge unused building site barrel and was given to the Greenwood Community High School as a gift in exchange for a free ad in the programme. Pamela had rolled up her sleeves and helped the four other misfits to paint. They, of course, wondered why a pretty girl like her could be a misfit. Extra credit art class, after all, was a misfit job. Why wasn't she confident enough to strut and get a guy? She couldn't answer that. Dominant parents? The angry dog next door? Loud siblings? A noise trauma at age three? Who knew? Anyway, Pamela felt like a star painting that moon, knowing she would be singing to it soon enough.

Mr. Barnes, the principal and amateur director, and Mrs. Young, the professional music teacher, supported her through the entire process, from choosing her to sing in the show to giving her singing lessons to fitting her costumes.

Sometimes, she wondered how it had been possible to be chosen at all.
Pamela had finished with her off-hours essay class back then, waiting for her Mom to pick her up. The gym looked like a promising place for a lonely girl to test a skill she had only displayed on her own in the shower. Singing. She loved it. The hallway empty and the other pupils gone, the school looked deserted. Promising enough for someone afraid of even herself. In there, her voice sounded free and beautiful, bigger than between the tiles of running water. Her favorite song sounded as if she really could sing, sung in the gym. Pamela felt as if she walked in unfamiliar terrain, a girl raised by a family where love and fear walked hand in hand, the same people she loved scaring her. She grew shy and only dared to break her autism when no one watched.

She blossomed when alone.
Who would be listening, after all?

"How can someone so beautiful be so insecure?" her mother had told her once and in here, with her voice sounding as if it were a million miles wide, she believed it. She felt watched. No wonder. At home, everyone did watch her, wondering why she was insecure. That was a sure way for someone never to get out of it.

The principal and the music teacher had been discussing tomorrow's schedule when they left for the parking lot, muttering about lazy students and half-eaten cantine meals on their way out, but the turned on lights in the sports hall and the sound of that voice made them curious. Who was that?
The voice had them standing in the doorway in admiration until the end, flabbergasted had Pamela, the 14 year-old girl she was back then, turn around and shriek, seeing them, remembering when she was caught drifting around her father's laboratory at age 5 and screamed at why she walked around among these dangerous toxins. Did her OCD break out at that point? Did the schoolyard mobbing make it worse? Would she ever heal?

She hadn't known why she had sung the song in the gym hall at all. Maybe because the shrieking voices of her classmates during sports caused her to wonder how singing could sound here. But actually singing here in front of people? Too scary. She came from a dominant family, one where her mom and dad both fought over what was right for her. She was the oldest of her siblings, but she had always felt inferior. Everyone else knew best, telling her "If I were you ..." And so she learned to think that other people did know best and trusting herself was wrong.

At first, seeing the music teacher and the high school orchestra conductor in the doorway scared her. "Oh, my God," she had thought to herself, "they're gonna hate me. I probably sound awful. They're gonna expel me. I am sorry,  Dad." And so when the two teachers wandered up to her in the gym, she shivered. What would they say? Her heart pounded. That feeling was old enough to give her oncoming toxic thoughts. But Mrs. Young embraced her and told her she was wonderful. She had to sing in the upcoming show.

"What? Me? In the Broadway Show?"
"Yes," Mr. Barnes smiled, "You have a lovely voice."

The scared laugh that came out of her mouth sounded like a weird opossum's cackle, her mind convinced no one could really like her. It didn't matter that people said she was the prettiest girl in class. She had no self confidence. Everyone treated her as if she didn't know what she was doing. But then she saw that the two teachers were serious.

When her mother picked her up from school late that day after her conference, wondering why Pamela was so quiet, Pamela stuttered something about not understanding how anyone could like her singing. She had been picked to sing "Memory" from "Cats" in the upcoming Broadway show in school. Of course, her mother went overboard with enthusiasm about her daughter joining the show as a "star". That quick change between low self esteem and enthusiasm scared her. But, in time, that would dwindle and turn into trust. Right?

Pamela's incessant repetition of the song became so dominant at home that her siblings hummed the tune half heartedly at breakfast. Becky actually sang the right words. A proud moment, to be sure. It had made an impression on Becky, but hearing Timmy sing "Moonshine, all alone on the pavement, I have lost all my marbles" was plain awful. Insulting. Her sister was on her side, though, telling him Pamela would be singing the wrong text on Saturday so he better shut up. In secret, Pamela was ashamed of not being able to defend herself and that felt even worse. The oncoming OCD was waiting in the wings. It became an angry Rottweiler.

The premiere went well at first. Even the Gilmore Girls, the three had named themselves that after their favorite TV-series that had kicked off that year of the millennium, they secretly envied that Pamela had a good voice, even they congratulated her. Evelyn, their leader, a dishy brunette with a foul mouth, hated her. But Pamela knew that they would be waiting in the first row hoping for her to make a mistake. Evelyn was a prime bitch that simply hated rivals and a pretty girl like Pamela being insecure was a field day. Evelyn had decided to crush her.

"A Night On Broadway" was filled with great showtunes and the atmosphere was radiant. Lionel from 8th grade performed his corny rendition of "Stars" from "Les Miserables" complete with one raised eyebrow all through the piece, looking like Wolverine on crack, waltzing around backstage like David Prowse on the set of "Star Wars". Sandy from 10th grade squeaked "All I want is a room somewhere" as Eliza from "My Fair Lady" so cutely that the guys literally left for the break with bulges in their pants. Yes, she was massively well endowed for a 16 year-old, which made her very popular with the boys.

Needless to say, it was a good show and quite a fun event for the high school. Mr. Barnes had taken it upon him to direct and choreograph the show with Mrs. Young conducting the orchestra.

Everyone was happy. Pamela performed her duets and bit parts fine. She could not stop shaking, though, that in spite of the leading team loving her. It gave her a boost. Maybe the bullying would stop after all. So she was given "Memory" to sing as a final solo before the finale, "There's No Business Like Show Business". The last solo? Oh, my.

The song started well. Her make-up flawless, her singing impeccable, she emulated Elaine Paige so well in her characterization that he heard whispers in the wings of "Boy, she's good". Pamela saw herself on Broadway sometime in the future.

No one could later say which technician had actually missed to double check the security chain of the eight foot wooden moon. It was a great looking thing, looking so real that people actually thought they were floating somewhere in space looking at the lunar lady. The last verse of the song and one very strong stomp from Pamela had the one chain fall from the hinge and the wooden moon hung there crookedly dangling back and forth. Pamela turned around and saw it, all her self confidence gone.

Suddenly, she wasn't the confident Broadway star anymore, but a petrified kitten clawing at everyone for fear of being eaten by wolves. She thought her stomp had caused the chain to break, but it was probably just a coincidence. The audience started laughing, some shrieked, but as Pamela wasn't hit the laughter was probably relief but Pamela took at as spite, and Pamela sang her last bars quite insecurely, stumbled off up the stairs, seeing the moon dangle, and exited down the ramp. The weird thing was that no one at first noticed that she fell. They found it funny that the moon was dangling. The audience kept on laughing at the moon like werewolves, thinking she was making a show of it. But she tripped off and sprained her ankle. It was weird, because the stage hands all came running to her while the finale was playing without her. Of course, her family wondered why she was not on stage. Her family went overboard afterwards, turning it into a cataclysm, discussing about what to do for her. Nobody asked what she needed. It was as if she was never there. As if she could not speak for herself. That one event kickstarted a huge mental loop that she could not control. Loving her family, but hating being treated like a fool and never being to defend herself, that turned her OCD into a mythological figure she misinterpreted as possession when it was caked up and neglected fear.

She came to the show on crutches the next day, the hospital giving her a brace and bandages. She sang the duets, she sang her number for the second show and was able to limp through the third and forth show on the next weekend. Her confidence would not return until twenty years later.

It turned extremely weird after that. Evelyn threw her dirty looks for no reason, maybe because she wanted to say she was sorry but didn't know how. Pamela's parents saw she was in a tight spot emotionally and started pulling her in different directions. Her self confidence had been crushed because she couldn't handle people she loved never asking her how the fall had affected her, but tried to treat her like a porcelain doll. The conflict of not being able to work on the issue exploded into massive OCD, her bad self confidence causing involuntary attacks on her family. It wore her down, giving her heart problems and brain problems.

Pamela became a person who swallowed her pain, stimming and gesturing away her involuntary thoughts against people she cared about in secret. She remained very insecure about what to do in certain situations and that conflict came across as friendliness. People interpreted her behavior as fear when it was calm or anger when it was fear. It drove her crazy and she didn't admit it and her neurosis attacked her conscious by spitting severities against her family. How else could her subconscious retaliate when her loved family had never really known what she felt? Nauseating.

She became that hard-nosed assistant executive that pushed herself to results, but grew extremely afraid of people. She said she felt like living in an Iron Maiden, a coffin with the spikes inward, but she also had spikes on the inside.

It had all started in the time when she felt most alone in her life, feeling as if she carried a huge weight on her own, unable to share her true feelings or who she was with anyone. She was supposed to be someone, expected to be a certain way. Being who she truly was what she needed but couldn't be or so she thought. At the same time, the pressure of achieving something became enormously strong. But sometimes she didn't truly believe in what she was supposed to achieve and this pressure turned toxic because it was her parents beliefs. Her subconscious grew wild and confused, thinking these small and sometimes minuscule achievements were more important than anything which they weren't. As a result, these toxic neurosis attacked her family because of the wild misunderstanding that these achievements were so important.

Bottom line, Pamela became misunderstood. She didn't even understand herself. She felt like one of Freddie Krueger's victims in a nightmare or Alice caught in Horrorland.

Therapy helped, but not only because of the therapy did she recover. It opened the doors to magic self-talk. She became very honest about what she truly it felt. The time when her OCD started dissolving, she became extremely spiritual. She remembered previous lives, communicated with angels and felt like a phoenix leaving the ashes. 

Pamela's extreme self-therapy one day had her come to her core and she could then actually live a normal life. Pamela had shocked-induced paralysis. Threatened by everyone if she did something wrong and not being trusted to do it right. How she became an assistant manager was a mystery to her.

When the Greenwood Community High School's principal, Mr. Barnes, the same Barnes who had hired her to sing "Memory" as a 14 year-old, called her to ask her if she would hold a lecture about life managing a company, Pamela had to swallow hard. She had avoided the school and only had limited contact with them. Her own four year-old daughter Sandy was in Kindergarten and Lenny, Pamela's husband kept telling her she had to face her fears at some time. He knew her pain. He felt her pain. He knew there was a huge light waiting for her at the other end of that pain.

What convinced her to say yes was a picture of Evelyn, the Queen of the Gilmore Girls. It was a sad face. A math teacher, yes, but not a confident one. One not made up excessively, but carefully cosmetic not to appeal too much. One struck by lightning. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Coming back to the same campus theatre with its modern looking stage and blue seats was daunting. She felt the toxic thoughts reemerging. She knew her parents had seen her grow cold. She clenched her fists, feeling her chest crawl up every time she met them. Let no one laugh at me, she thought to herself. But she pictured herself in a beautiful field of lillies and then it was all right.

She managed to be friendly enough to the team, showing no one her brain was throwing knives at the world. She looked like an executive, blue skirt, hair in a bun, a dishy blonde, but inside she was petrified. "Lillies," she told herself and smiled.

The crowd of youngsters listened as she spoke of her company creating musical instruments and loudspeakers and show gear and how to work in a tough environment like that. There were questions about if she had met some stars. She answered that she had provided Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds with amps for a show. He was an Indiana boy. But she didn't know if any of the kids knew who he was. Three people followed him on Tik Tok.

Ten minutes of shaking hands, ten more minutes of smiling and getting her check. One minute of getting an offer to do it again and giving them her new business card. One minute of slow breathing.
After all the hullabaloo calmed down, she told Mr. Barnes she would want to be alone here for a bit before getting her daughter from kindergarten. He accepted, giving her the compassionate look she had gotten now for twenty years from too many people. One that was shivering, the people around her themselves unable to say they were sorry. Overpowering her with information because they were nervous and insecure where she was or how they felt. Maybe it was all about guilt. Were they to blame for her demise? Was she? Maybe nobody was guilty.

Pamela wandered about the stage, wondering what ever happened to the moon. Had it been thrown away with the excessive garbage, given away to the lumber yard? The smell of the stage was still the same. There was sweat here, but also the slight scent of lavender. She knew Barnes had always maintained to add some slight lavender into the venting system just to calm down the actors. It had never worked for her.

She sat down on the edge of the stage, dangling her feet, feeling like a little 8th grader again. Had time passed at all? What was time, after all? She had spent the last twenty years petrified. Had it been worth it? The last time she had dangled her feet here like that was the night of the premiere. Twenty years ago, she had felt this feeling of calm, as if everything was going to be alright. Before she raced into massive fear. Of what, she wondered? Of being a scared kid inside and judged as a sexy person on the outside? Of having men gaze at her breasts when she ached in her soul? Of having people overpower her with info because of insecurity? Afraid of her own thoughts?

The silence was magical. For the first time since the moon fell, she felt a sense of calm. God had opened a door, letting Alice out of Wonderland. No more iron maiden. Just spirit.

The familiar squeak of the auditorium door reverberated across the distance. In all these years, the hinges had not been oiled. In the doorway, a woman stood that used to be very beautiful. Now a few pounds more on her carcass, she wasn't the sexy femme fatale she had been twenty years ago. Still young, but obviously hit by some hard blow that had caused her to slouch. Gazes met and wounds were now on display. Festering pus.

The high heels clicking on linoleum floor caused Pamela to contemplate why that sound was misinterpreted as confidence. The woman writhed her hands, as if she were approaching a dark cave.

Carefully, like an animal approaching a threat, the woman slid up on stage, sitting down next to Pamela.
"She is sitting down next to me," Pamela thought to herself. "Why is she doing that?"

"We kids used to do this before shows," Evelyn croaked. "Remember?"

Pamela slowly turned her head to the woman and looked into the woman's eyes and saw guilt. This was not what she had expected. To Pamela, this woman had been the embodiment of evil, a girl that slipped play-dough into her school bag, thorns into her hair and pushed her against the wall and called the wall flower.

"Yeah," Pamela answered.

Pamela saw the woman's eyelids twitch. It was the fear of someone afraid to be attacked. She had lived with absolute disgust of herself.

Evelyn looked down, biting her lip. She began speaking but stopped several times. Pamela knew that the OCD had started with Evelyn, maybe. The disgust and fear of this person, though, had nothing to do with this person that sat here now. Pamela's OCD had gotten worse once one original trigger appeared. Her mother feeling unable to deal with her husband's choleric outbursts and getting asthma because of it. So the love she couldn't express was pushed on Pamela, "Be like us and we won't be afraid to lose you because of our problems and we won't have to deal with our problems!", which gave her mother asthma. Suffocation, inability to deal with reality. Her mother told her she was the only one that could save her life. Pamela heard her mother suffocate of asthma early in the morning and would spring up out of sleep and embrace her and it would make the asthma attack stop. Pamela was the only one to calm her mother down, her mother said. So she learned that her behavior had to be right in order for her mother to live. Even a wrong thought of hers could kill. Which, of course, was completely wrong. So, Pamela thought, was Evelyn the cause of her OCD or just something that just made it worse?

"I'm sorry for treating you like I did, Pamela," Evelyn said. "I must have caused you pain."

Pamela's soul found a small light. Not big. Hidden way behind the rubble, but the batteries were still working.

"I have to tell you something."

"What?"

"After we graduated," Evelyn began, "the Gilmore Girls broke up. They disappeared. Laura moved to Seattle and became a housewife. Carrie tried Hollywood, but as far as I know she is working in a diner. The TV-series we loved was taken off air and I enrolled in Indiana State University and eventually I became this.

She made a silly gesture.

"A math teacher. You learned management and accounting and probably spent years hating me."

Evelyn still did not look up at her.

"Years before getting my degree, on October 9th, 2008, on the way back from class to my dorm room, I was raped by three very strong men, whose behavior got me in hospital. I had felt shame about how I behaved toward you, mostly because everything changed after high school. My brother tried to kill himself, my parents split up and I broke my leg. So what do they say? What goes around, comes around."

The silence of the theatre really had both women think of fear turning to respect.

"Gee wiz," Pamela began. "What a fate."

"I was in hospital after my rape," Evelyn sighed, "my parents actually in one room together without throwing plates at one another. My brother sat in the corner, chatting with his Survivor buddies."

Pamela tilted her head.

"Suicide survivors."

"Ah."

"Anyway," Evelyn continued, "I had a revelation there in that hospital bed. One of the rapists ..." She paused, breathing in deeply, her voice cracking and trembling.

Pamela saw not an enemy, but someone with genuine guilt. Evelyn was sorry. Hitler had become Gandhi.

Something extraordinary happened. When Evelyn began crying, Pamela had sympathy with her perpetrator. Hatred became love. She put her hand on her arm. Evelyn smiled a smile of gratitude. Being pardoned. Glances were exchanged. There was a smile.

"It's okay, Evie," Pamela said. "I'm here."

Pamela put a finger under Evelyn's chin and raised her head.

"You never called me Evie before."

Pamela smiled. "First time's a charm."

Evelyn picked up a well used hankie from her jacket pocket. "Simon, my brother," she added, gesturing with her hankie at Pamela, throwing around some germs, "is a shrink now who specializes on suicide survivors. They have a motto in his practice." She gestured, again with her hankie in the air, lowering her voice to sound very Hollywood: "Every shrink is a former victim."

"Good show," Pamela said.

"Sounds British."

Pamela laughed.

"Anyway," Evelyn continued, "putting her hankie in her pocket, "one of the rapists called me a wallflower while banging me."

Evelyn laughed, then she grew really quiet. So quiet that both 34 year-old women sat there quiet for a very long time. The word poignant, then holy came to mind. Holy, because two people were being healed simultaneously. Where two are gathered in my name, I am there with them. The phrase came to Pamela's mind as they sat there.

"I swore on that hospital never to treat anyone like I treated you again. I called you a wallflower."

God and Adam. Finger touching finger. Evelyn lay her hand on Pamela's lap. Pamela took it, their fingers interlocking like lovers do. "Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

"The rapists didn't and I didn't."

"You were a kid, Evelyn."

Evelyn sighed. "You know that this is weird?"

"What?" Pamela whispered.

"In the midst of this atrocity, there was hope. I heard the man calling me a wallflower and I felt humiliated, crawling into a corner. At that moment, at the lowest point of my life, I saw myself pushing you against the wall, calling you a wallflower, causing others to laugh at you. This sounds strange, but I felt an angelic presence there, holding my hand. I was being led and it wasn't lethal or toxic. Had I died, I would have gone into my light. But it wasn't my time. God, this is strange."

Pamela had no words to say, but she knew in her heart what this light was. This feeling.

"Mirrors. We are mirrors and the events we live through are simply tools with which we get to experience the way to love."

Pamela's very modest smile caused Evelyn to grow very quiet. In just under ten minutes, two souls burned by trauma had been healed. Words. Feelings. Riddles.

"Just before I started my psychotherapy, I visited a healer in Wisconsin who told me that. It woke me up. In a way, us meeting like this is a step on the journey."

Both women looked up toward the ceiling, gazing at the lights that still illuminated the room. "Whatever happened to the moon, Evelyn?"

Evelyn nodded, looking down. "We kept it. It's in its original state in the attic. Nobody knows why. Maybe someone in the future wants to put on a Broadway show."

Evelyn nudged Pamela.

"You still singing?"

Pamela nodded. "In mass at church. Occasional small venues. I sing to my daughter."

"Maybe that would be a return to excellence."

"A show here?"

Evelyn nodded.

"Singing 'Memory' from 'Cats'?"

Evelyn shrugged. "Why not?"

Pamela slapped her own knees slightly, a thing she used to do back when her fear hadn't kept her so massively in gear, realizing a greater portion of her deep fear had vanished. The psychologicists called that Exposure and Response Prevention. "Why not?"

She stood up, looking into Evelyn's eyes. "Thank you."

"For what? Treating you like a fool in high school?"

Pamela shook her head. "No. For curing my OCD."

Evelyn shook Pamela's hand, surprised at what she had just heard. Now both hands were on Evelyn's. "I truly am sorry for how I treated you. I was a stupid bitch."

Pamela shook her head. "It's in the past. I'm sorry about your traumas."

Evelyn nodded, her hands shaking a bit, that nervous eye twitch still there. But she was no longer in the cave. She was in the open air, proverbially speaking.

The surprise hug came from Evelyn.

"Sorry about yours."

Pamela was still weary of contact, but she knew Evelyn was healing.

"See you around, Gilmore Girl."

A new revelation made Pamela walk straight this time, feeling confident about facing her fears.

Three steps away from first row, Evelyn spoke again. "I hired you for this gig, you know."

Surprised, Pamela turned around, seeing her former foe in a completely new light of retribution. "Thank you."

Evelyn waved off the thanks. "I long contemplated getting some speaker to tell the kids what the real working life is like. With all the media around, it seems like they spend more time on Tik Tok than facing reality."

"I have been fighting reality for twenty years, Evie."

"But you're facing it. Unlike me, that is. A couple of months ago, my husband showed my son Billy 'Star Wars: A New Hope' for the first time. I was forced to watch."

"I actually like that movie."

"Good for you," Evie laughed. "After that, Billy bought himself two action figures: Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker. On one dark November night, I was sitting surfing the web, contemplating who would be the right person to hold the lecture about life in the real world. I don't know how, but your name came up super quick."

"That had to be a mistake," Pam laughed.

"Nah-Uh," Evelyn contradicted. "You know what the weird thing is? As I am sitting there, seeing your face on the company's website, I asked myself if I should trust my feelings. I had this hunch I had to offer you this to show you I stopped being a bitch."

"That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."

"This goes on. At that moment, four year-old Billy sits across from me, holding his action figures and quotes 'Star Wars': 'Trust your feelings, Luke.'"

Pamela broke down in tears, realizing that not only did God exist, she was leading her all the way to glory.

It wasn't clear how long they were locked in embrace, it was only clear to Pamela that the Holy Spirit spoke through her when she said: "We are works in progress, Evelyn. Some of us just get quicker to our goals than others."

The sun seemed to shine brighter up in the sky than before and when Pamela picked up her daughter from kindergarten, her daughter smiled and lisped through her tooth gap. "You're not fidgeting, Mom. Did something good happen?"

"Yes, Sandy. Mom faced her fears. She's fidget-free."

One can imagine how long Sandy said the words 'fidget-free' that day. Her husband could not stop laughing, even while the married couple made love later that night.

Pamela performed 'Memory' from 'Cats' again the following year in front of a full enthusiastic audience. This time, the moon didn't fall. Like the phoenix, it had risen.

Sandy, Billy, Evie, Pam, Lenny and Kenny regularly hold karaoke nights in each other's houses. They call it 'The Two Families Nights'.

The motto: problems really can be solved.

The moon has finally risen.