The Hunger Moon (18 page)

“I’m sorry, Mrs. MacGregor. I’ll be back in about a half an hour with your groceries and the bank receipt. Did you make a list?”

Eleanor stared at her blankly.

“Never mind, I know what you’re out of. I’ll need about thirty dollars, though.”

Eleanor went to her purse and gave her the money. She was too irritated to speak. When the door closed, she rocked in her chair, fuming. She would be so glad when Janice was past this teenage stage of talking back and questioning her every move.

S
HE MUST HAVE DOZED
; June’s key in the door woke her. She followed June into the kitchen and helped her unpack the grocery bags. She had a disturbing sense of having dreamed, but the images were obliterated by the present, like double-exposed film.

“Oh, you remembered cleanser; I meant to put that on the list,” she said.

June looked at her. “Do you feel okay today, Mrs. MacGregor?”

“Well, I am tired,” Eleanor admitted.

“You didn’t seem well before I left. I think the bank upset you.”

The feeling of powerlessness stole back. “The bank? Oh, those silly returned checks. I don’t know what’s wrong with my memory these days. I entered that deposit, but never walked it to the bank.”

“The deposit’s made now. I put the receipt on your desk as I came in. It’s right beside your checkbook.”

“Thank you, June.”

“Have you ever thought of having your checks go directly to your account?”

“That’s what Janice thinks I should do, but I just don’t trust those computers. I feel much better going to a human being at the teller’s window and getting a receipt.”

June finished putting the fruit and cold cuts in the refrigerator,
and neatly folded the bags, just the way Eleanor liked. Then she shrugged on her jacket, an old peacoat that Eleanor privately thought was a sorry sight. A young woman like June should not look so ragged all the time. All she wore were boys’ clothes—jeans, sweatshirts that were much too large for her, and a coat that she had found in the army-navy store. If she were Eleanor’s daughter, she would insist that June at least have a decent coat; something made for a girl.

June hesitated by the door. “Mrs. MacGregor, do you know that you thought I was Janice before I left for the grocery store?”

Eleanor blinked; again the sense of tilting, as if the room were not plumb. “Did I call you Jan? I’m sorry. You must admit that they are rather similar names: June, Jan. But I could never confuse the two of you; don’t worry about that.”

After June left, Eleanor stared absently toward the door. Then she looked down and saw that one gnarled old hand was patting the other at her waist, as if to reassure a friend.

J
UNE WAS THE FIRST ONE IN DANCE CLASS
on Friday. Her teacher, Mary Ann, was just setting up the tape.

“Excited about tomorrow?” she asked June.

“Very. Thanks for asking me. I love Richard’s work.”

June sat on the floor, her legs wide in a V, lowering her chest gradually to the ground in front of her. She lay there a few seconds, feeling the tension ease out of her hamstrings; this was no day to pull a muscle.

Other students started filtering into the studio wearing a motley assortment of leotards, T-shirts, and leggings. People tended to roll right out of bed for this seven-thirty class. They came in with unwashed faces and unbrushed hair hastily pulled back in an elastic. But it was a great way to start the day; afterward June felt warm and loose, every muscle humming awake as she showered and changed into jeans for class.

“Okay, people, let’s start moving,” Mary Ann said, clapping her hands.

The students stood in uneven rows, shaking out a foot or an arm muscle, facing Mary Ann, who had her back to the mirrors. She punched the button on the cassette and a recording of funk started playing.

“One, and two, and three, and four …” June closed her eyes during their usual warm-up, moving with the rhythms, feeling the energy from the music start to charge her up. They did some patterns together, then Mary Ann started them on movements traveling diagonally across the floor. One line of students waited in each corner, with new dancers moving into the middle space at eight-beat intervals, passing each other in improvised traffic patterns in the center, where they resembled a star in flux. Improvisation revealed who were the dancers and who were not. The real dancers used stillness as much as they used motion. Their movements took shape from within, and they never ran after the music, but let it travel through them.

During improv, June kept crossing against Max’s turn, a tall black dancer who could get amazing height with his leaps and jumps. June was only five feet five; she wasn’t about to jump with Max on the floor because her lack of elevation would only call attention to his strength. Instead she used her knack for making quick, complicated steps to counterpoint his streamlined running and leaping. Max caught on to her strategy, and the next time they met in the center of the floor, he made his movements even stronger, and June wove some tricky and almost comic turns around him. They had something going that resembled chase and pursuit, with June first baiting Max, then eluding him.

Mary Ann clapped her hands to end the freestyle moving. “Nice work, June, Max. You see how they worked the space together? They weren’t just out there doing their own thing. Okay. Let’s get in lines and start the cooldown. Wide legs, knees over toes, deep plié.”

When class finished and the students gave themselves a ritual smattering of applause, June and Max high-fived each other.

“You going tomorrow?” he asked. There was no need to be more specific.

“Of course. You?”

“You bet,” Max said. “I heard it’s going to be small, just eight of us invited. I also heard something else,” he teased.

“What did you hear?” June demanded.

“He’s shopping.”

“For dancers?” June squealed.

“No, for eggplants, you goose.”

“How do you know this?”

“Judith mentioned it to Mary Ann, who mentioned it to me. She didn’t know any details. But Richard is doing guest spots at about six schools in the next month, and Mary Ann said he usually invites a couple of new kids to apprentice in New York every summer.” Max did a couple of quick steps around her, his muscles gleaming with sweat under the T-shirt he had cut down to a ragged tank top. “This is it, baby. Big Apple, here I come.” He was the best dancer in the class; the students and instructors all tacitly acknowledged it. He also made no secret of his real ambitions, which were to leave school and dance with a company.

June picked up her towel in the women’s locker room. This could be it for her, too; this was the opportunity Miriam had seen in her tarot cards last week. The most significant card in her array was the Judgment card. It was a picture of an angel with golden hair summoning souls as they rose from their coffins with arms outstretched. June was afraid of it, until Miriam told her it was most of all a card of outcomes and transitions—a card that heralded transforming change.

T
HAT AFTERNOON AT
M
RS.
M
ACGREGOR’S
, June waited until she determined Mrs. M.’s mood before chatting in her usual way. But Mrs. M. was her normal, quick-witted self; not a hint remained of the confusion she had shown the past Tuesday. She seemed cheerful, and was looking forward to her children’s visit. Both Helen and Peter were coming into town on Saturday afternoon, and they planned to have a family dinner on Saturday night and a brunch on Sunday before Peter drove back to New Hampshire. June didn’t mention the potential audition nature of tomorrow’s class, but she did tell Mrs. M. again about Richard’s visit. This time she heard her.

“It sounds like quite an honor, June, to be asked for the class. How long will it be?”

“Probably about two hours. They scheduled it early, for eight
A
.
M
., because his company performs in town in the evening.”

“Well, make sure you get plenty of rest tonight. You’ll be baby-sitting for Charlie?”

“Yes, but that’s no problem. I’m usually home by one.”

A
T FOUR-THIRTY
J
UNE WENT NEXT DOOR
. Renata was just finishing nursing Charlie, and in five minutes she fed herself haphazardly, grabbing some chips and soda, and taking a handful of cookies for the road.

“How do you eat that stuff and stay so skinny?” June asked her. Every time she saw her, Renata was casually munching down at least a thousand calories’ worth of junk food.

“What stuff?” Renata said, blotting her lipstick in the mirror.

“Chips and cookies and Coke for dinner. If I ate like that, I’d be a blimp.”

“I’ve always eaten like this. But since I’ve been nursing, I’ve also been starving all the time.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, shit, I’ve got to go. Have fun, you two. See you tonight.” She kissed the top of Charlie’s head and dashed out.

Charlie was delighted to see June and spent several minutes razzing energetically. They played together on the carpet, Charlie swaying dangerously as he grabbed at his toys, since he was just learning to sit unsupported. Whenever he saw something that he wanted to reach for, he began waving his arms and falling in slow motion to one side. June had put pillows all around him to soften his falls, and she caught him most of the time, but on the occasions when she wasn’t quick enough, he toppled over with a puzzled, distant expression. June learned that if she didn’t look concerned herself, he wouldn’t cry after falling over. Instead, she swooped him up with a big smile, saying gaily, “Charlie fell over.” It was the most amazing thing that he would decide whether to feel pain based on the expression on her face. Maybe
she should let him decide himself when something hurt.

At six o’clock she set him up in his new high chair and mixed together a tiny portion of rice cereal. Charlie had begun solid foods this week, and he was very pleased with this new development in his life. He would grab for the spoon and help guide it, sometimes to his chin or cheek, and when a morsel made it successfully to his mouth, he would jam his fingers in after, smacking and sucking. By the time June fed him, and cleaned him and the high chair, it was just about time to get him ready for bed. In the two weeks she had spent with Charlie, June had learned some tricks. She discovered that he liked to dance with her, and for the transition from play to sleep, she waltzed them around in the darkened apartment, until Charlie finally quit grabbing her hair and prodding her in the ribs with his feet and relaxed, leaning his heavy head against her shoulder. Then she would rock him while he drank his bottle, and by seven o’clock he was usually either asleep or ready to lie in his crib, sucking on his pacifier while he drifted off.

Tonight Charlie went right to sleep, leaving June free to think about tomorrow. She almost wished Max hadn’t told her what he had heard, because now she was thinking of the class as an audition. What if Bruce Richard asked them to do an improv? What could she impress him with? As she paced around the quiet apartment, she felt more and more fluttery. She started thinking about all the sweet things in the cupboards.
No, June
, she warned herself. If you make yourself sick tonight, you won’t be able to dance tomorrow. Your body will be bloated and you will feel miserable and depressed, and the audition will be over before it even begins.

Still, she went to the refrigerator and stared in at the half-open containers and wrappers. Renata was messy in the kitchen. She never put lids back or wrapped anything so that it would keep. There was a whole bag of Snickers bars ripped open in the fridge, the small kind you buy to give out on Halloween. Renata was the only person June had ever met who routinely bought several kinds of candy bars in bulk packages, just to have on hand. She had so
many back-up bags in the cupboards that a person could eat through a whole open package in the refrigerator, and then replace it, with Renata probably never even noticing. People who were normal about food usually didn’t count how many of a thing were left. If something ran out sooner than they expected, they might register a slight feeling of surprise, but their first thought would never be that someone had eaten a whole package of cookies or candy in one sitting. June had discovered this axiom a few years ago, while baby-sitting as a high school student. There were other ways of doing it, too: taking one slice of cake, one scoop of ice cream, two cookies, and so on, proceeding all the way through the kitchen, so that the levels of everything dipped proportionately, with nothing appearing to be really missing.

June grabbed a carrot from the crisper and had to spend five minutes pulling off all the little root hairs that were growing out of it. Then she spent another five minutes scraping it carefully, and cutting it into smooth, even sticks. She still paced, chewing on the carrot sticks without even noticing they were in her mouth. She would screw it up tomorrow; she knew she would. Her thoughts went back to food. What had she had for dinner, anyway? Just a turkey sandwich. She did a calorie count and found that she had about two hundred to spare for the day. One candy bar would be fine. She heated water in the kettle and envisioned herself sitting down to savor the chocolate with a hot cup of tea to calm her down. But the tea water took so long to heat that she had already eaten the candy bar before she even unwrapped the tea bag. That was okay. How many calories were in one little bar—eighty, at the most? She could have another, and even a third, which would put her just forty calories over the day’s total. She might not even be over, because she had figured her breakfast and lunch calories rather loosely, rounding up for good measure. This time she unwrapped two bars and sliced them into three pieces each. She arrayed them on a little plate, and by the time she was through, the water was boiling. She still needed to let the bag steep for three minutes or so, though. She paced around the living room,
making herself stay out of the kitchen until the tea was ready. Then she sat down and ate the pieces of chocolate, one by one. She drank tea in between each bite to fill up with liquid. The chocolate worked on her like a drug. It was wonderfully smooth and rich. At least she was noticing what it tasted like; that was a good sign.