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Blue Moon 5.3

by Donna Lamb

When Joel's lifeless body had been pulled from the wreckage of the old car she had given him when he moved to Hollywood, Beverly Messenger thought her life had ended. Two days after Thanksgiving and her heart had been torn to shreds, again. God, she had decided, had it in for her. Jonathan, her husband of thirty years had died before his sixtieth birthday, shortly after Joel's college graduation, at least he'd gotten to see that.

And he hadn't had to bury their son. Too many tragedies in too long a life.

Late-born, she'd been thirty-five -- long after Jonathan and she had given up -- they'd named the baby, Joel, "God is willing" it meant, the rabbi said. They'd been so happy with their little man. And years later, another miracle, another pregnancy, but that one had not gone well, a premature, still-born child they'd been told. Heartbreaking but they'd had Joel, such a good boy, bright, thoughtful, well-mannered. They named the little baby girl they never got to hold Miriam on the headstone, "bitterness," and went on.

Then Jonathan died, his heart just gave out, then Joel, God punish all drunk drivers, and all three of them lay under the grass in the Jewish part of a very nice cemetery in the Valley, one beside another with the open place for her between the baby and Jonathan. She'd known she would be going there soon herself, because what did she have to live for? No children, no grandchildren, her sister's kids never came to see her and Joanna living in San Francisco now, so far away, that Chinese gentleman she'd married after her Gregory died had taken her to be close to his family.

And then, just days after she'd buried Joel next to his father, a girl knocked on the door and said, "I think you might be my m-mother." And she looked so very like Joel with her blond hair and green eyes, and she even had the same stutter, though she was so skinny, and so tall for a girl, almost as tall as Joel. But Jonathan's people had all been tall.

There'd been a mixup at the hospital, two tiny babies in incubators, so fragile, and one of them died. But it had been the wrong one. And her name was Melody Jo Thierry, she'd grown up almost in the same neighborhood in the Valley but had gone to different schools. And her foster parents had died the same Thanksgiving weekend Joel had and she'd been injured, had to have her head shaved to operate on it which is why she wore a wig but her hair eventually came back in and it was blond with that ginger cast the same as Joel's.

She couldn't remember much of her life, because of her injury, she'd been knocked about in the wreck herself with a broken arm still in a cast till after New Year's. But in the hospital, she'd found out she couldn't be the daughter of the Thierrys, who had surely loved her like their own and maybe never knew, because she had the wrong blood type. They were A and O and she was type B, just like Joel and Jonathan, and Beverly, too for that matter.

And then they'd had the most wonderful month and a half, discovering each other, and falling in love as mother and daughter. But she wasn't Joel, she was a little wild and headstrong, and she'd gone out to find the brother she'd never known, find out about his life, meet his friends, visit the places he had worked. She hadn't come home to Beverly in days, though she had another home of her own, the Thierrys', since legally she was their daughter still, but she didn't answer the phone there nor her cellphone, for two days.

Then suddenly a call from a very worried and stressed sounding Melody Jo who'd called her Mom, just like she'd started doing that first night they had found each other. Her baby had called her and lifted a stone off Beverly's heart again. She'd call back. Melody was a good girl, if just a little wild. She'd call her mother back.

Beverly Messenger waited by the phone, trying not to worry. She had a child again, and hope someday of grandchildren. Sixty-one wasn't old, with luck and God willing, she might live to hold the babies of Melody's babies on her lap. The girl would call, she loved her mother and Beverly wouldn't think of losing her again.

* * *

"Good God," said the Devil in Drag.

"Exactly," said Ted Clarence.