Valley of the Moon (27 page)

Even though we butted heads quite a bit and I'm sure Mr. Pease would have liked to fire me, he couldn't. My customers adored me and made sure to trumpet their satisfaction to the credit union staff. Aluminum-foil-wrapped paper plates covered my desk. Homemade baklava, cookies, biscotti. Frequently I received flowers—not from the florist, but hand-picked bouquets from backyard gardens, the stems wrapped in damp paper towels. I secured my customers' loans. Their kids graduated high school, and gave their valedictorian speeches while flashing perfectly straight teeth.

I was the patron saint of the out-of-date, the invisible, and the left behind.

Benno began calling every Sunday at four. All week long I looked forward to our phone date. I kept a notebook of things I wanted to share with him. Penny's latest escapades. The new bodega that had opened on Divisadero. The plate of empanadas a grateful member had given me.

He in turn played me his favorite songs. Confessed how much he hated his Latin teacher. And asked me about his father. Did he have any extended family on Nelson's side?

I told him that when he was very young I'd hired a private detective and found Nelson's mother in Wisconsin. A little town called Folsom Lake.

“Just his mother? No father? No brothers or sisters?” he asked. Obviously, he'd been fantasizing about having a big family. Aunts and uncles. Cousins.

“That's it, as far as I know.”

“Did you call her? Did you tell her about me?”

“Benno, are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Why? Is it bad?”

“I don't think it's what you want to hear, which is why I haven't told you before.”

“Well, now you
have
to tell me.”

“All right. I wrote to her. I told her about meeting Nelson in San Francisco before he shipped out. I told her what a lovely man he was, how much I enjoyed our time together. I even made copies of the letters he'd sent the first couple of months he was in Vietnam. I wanted to make sure she believed me.”

“You have
letters
?”

“Yes, and I'd be happy to let you read them if you'd like. You'll get a real sense of him. He was funny and honest and full of heart, just like you.”

Benno went silent.

“I also told Anna King about you. That was the real point of the letter. I enclosed your picture and offered to come to Wisconsin to visit.”

“Did we go?”

“No, sweetheart.”

“Why?”

“Because she opened the letter, read it, and then taped it back up. Then she wrote
Return to Sender
on the envelope and mailed it back to me.”

It took a moment for Benno to take that in. “She didn't want us. She didn't want me!” he cried.

I heard my mother in the background and Benno telling her to go away. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. A minute later he came back on.

“She didn't know you, Benno. If she'd gotten to know you, she'd have wanted you. Who knows why she wasn't capable of responding? Maybe she was scared. Maybe she thought I was lying. Maybe she was in so much pain from Nelson's death that she couldn't bear the thought of dredging it all back up. I don't know.”

He hung up soon after that. What more was there to say? I anguished. Had I done the right thing? Should I have given him a less painful version of the truth? Should I have lied and told him Nelson had no family? But Benno called me the following night, and the night after that, and soon we were speaking daily. Making our way back to one another.

On June 28, 1981, Benno came home. I met him at the airport gate, nervously holding a box of See's chocolate creams. When I saw him coming up the ramp with his shaggy hair and ripped jeans, I threw the box in the trash. This was not a visiting dignitary, this was my son.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said back.

He made no move to hug me and I kept my distance; I'd take my cues from him. We walked through the airport, at least a foot between us.

“The car smells funny,” he said when I opened the trunk.

“Like what?”

“I don't know. Rotten apples. Or bananas.”

“Oh—sorry.”

“No prob.” He shook his hair out of his eyes. “Can we stop somewhere and get a milkshake?”

He sucked down his black and tan frappe.

“Good?” I asked.

“You don't know how much I've been craving one of those.”

“Awful Awful's didn't cut it?”

“I got sick of them after a while. Too thick. You had to eat them with a spoon.”

The adolescent cool dribbled down his face, exposing the boy. “What now?” he asked nervously.

“Home?”

“I guess. Will Anjuli be there?”

“She should be. She's got a regular babysitting gig with Penny.”

“Rose and Doro?”

“Of course. Everybody is so excited to see you. To welcome you back.”

“You didn't plan some kind of a surprise party, did you?”

I tried to read his face. Should I have? Did he want one? “I thought you'd want to settle in first. But we could have a party this weekend. That's a great idea.”

He signaled to the waitress for the check. He looked exactly like my father in that moment; clearly he'd copied the gesture from him.

The waitress put the check face-down on the table, and I went to pick it up. Benno grabbed it first.

“I've got it.” He slid his wallet out of his back pocket and extracted a ten-dollar bill.

“Did Grandma give you money?”

“It's my money. I earned it at McGillicutty's. I worked there on weekends. Sweeping up. Doing laundry.”

My father made him get a job?

“It was fun. And it was my idea, not Grandpa's.”

When we got back in the car, Benno fiddled with the radio dial. He spun past “While You See a Chance” and “Jessie's Girl.” He stopped on Elton John's “Tiny Dancer.”

“I love this song.” He turned his face away from me so I couldn't see him crying.

On the next full moon, I took him with me to the Valley of the Moon. We tramped through the forest. Every ten steps or so, he'd stop and look up at the sky. I hadn't told him anything about Greengage. The only way to explain it was for him to see it. My plan was to bring him here every full moon until we were let in.

We walked up the creek bank. He carried the knapsack and our gear, loping along easily. All I'd told him was that we were going camping overnight. If the fog appeared—well, then I'd tell him everything.

The last couple of weeks had been awkward and sweet as we tried to figure out how to live with each other again. In a way we were strangers. Instead of calling me every night, he called Newport. My parents were a safety net now.

He liked that I had a proper job. Liked that I left the house at eight wearing a dress and heels. He'd become quite independent. In the mornings he'd take off soon after me and make his rounds: to the dog pound to visit the strays, over to Tower Records, skateboarding in Golden Gate Park. In the afternoons he kept Anjuli company while she babysat Penny for Rhonda.

“This way,” I said, directing him to the clearing of redwoods.

He put the knapsack down by the fire pit. “You've been here before?”

“A few times.”

We hadn't talked yet about where I'd gone. He knew what he'd been told by my parents: I'd joined some commune called Greengage, but he hadn't wanted to know more and so I hadn't offered. What kind of a place could have exerted such a pull that it kept me away from him for a year? It was clearly easier for him not to ask.

“It's like Lapis Lake,” he said.

He didn't have to tell me what he meant. The Valley of the Moon had a timeless feel, just like the lake.

“You came here alone?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“You were never scared?”

“I was scared, sometimes.”

“But you came anyway?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “Because sometimes fear is the thing that makes you feel most alive.”

It had taken Benno a long time to learn to hold his breath underwater. He was five, nearly six, when he finally did it.

“Keep your eyes open,” I'd told him, that long-ago day at the Y.

“Don't let go of me,” he said.

“I won't. I promise.”

We slipped under the surface of the pool together, holding hands. His cheeks bulged. His little legs kicked wildly. He gazed at me with a death stare, and I remember I just kept nodding, silently transmitting
You're okay, you're okay
to him.

Now he said softly, “I want to feel alive.”

Five hours later, Benno yelled, “Mom, Mom, wake up!”

The tent was unzipped; Benno was outside. I stepped into the fog. It swirled around me.

“I've never seen fog like this. It's so thick, like a blizzard. You could get totally lost,” he said, a look of wonder on his face.

Or found. I took his hand.

I
t is naïve, I know, but you never think the unspeakable thing will happen to you. That is something that happens to other people. That is the accident you watch from the side of the road, unable to tear your eyes away from the mangled body in the street, a stranger, somebody's mother, somebody's daughter, somebody's sister, somebody's wife.
Somebody's
beloved, but not yours. Never yours. That experience has always resided outside of you. You are the observer. That is your birthright. You will go home, whole and intact, having come face-to-face with your mortality from a safe distance, and everything will be heightened for a time. You will be grateful. For the full coal bin in the basement. For the sound of your loved ones in the kitchen at dusk, laughing quietly as you sit in the parlor, an unread book on your lap, feeling vibrantly, exquisitely alive, because you were not the one, you are never the one.

Today, I was the one. And for all the rest of my days, I'd be the one, too. The man who'd lost his wife so brutally and so suddenly there was no time to say goodbye. I recognized the stunned look in my friends' eyes. Astonishment and relief. I didn't blame them. I'd been standing erect on the side of the road all my life, and now it was my turn to kneel in the street. The question wasn't why this had happened. The question was why I ever thought I'd be spared.

Decisions had to be made. Where would Martha be buried? We were only in our forties, we'd never discussed the particulars of our deaths. I knew Martha would not want a religious service and she'd want to be buried somewhere beautiful. I chose the meadow that abutted our backyard. In the spring it would be full of poppies.

At first I was remarkably clear-headed. Driven by tasks. Fancy and Eleanor washed and dressed her body. Magnusson made a beautiful coffin out of walnut.

There was a service. People wept. People paid tribute. I did not. My sorrow was a private thing. Each night I grieved behind the closed bedroom door. I allowed myself one week of this emotional indulgence, then I packed Martha's things away: her clothes, her lotions, her knickknacks. I left virtually nothing in the bedroom but the bed, a side table, and the washstand.

The weeks crept by. The moon waned and waxed. Lux did not come. I was disappointed, but not surprised. She'd accidentally stayed through the Greengage full moon, and while she'd done so, time had most likely accelerated on the other side of the fog. She would have had no idea what she was walking into, how much time would have passed. Even if it was only a month she'd been gone, she'd have to account for where she'd been. Had she told her family about us? Had she given away our secret? I found myself not caring either way.

A second month went by; it passed even more slowly than the first. I'd thought I'd have acclimated to Martha's death by now, but grief was a tapeworm, relentlessly burrowing its way inside me. Every night, when I finally drifted off to sleep, I'd forget she'd died. In my dreams we'd meet and have ordinary conversations that felt utterly real. The calendula was late to flower. What a lovely, surprising August rain. Would I like a biscuit, some jam for my toast, some peppermint tea? And when I woke in the morning, I would have to remember that she was gone.

Greengage had slipped out of time; now I slipped out of time, too, incapable of anchoring myself to anything.

Nine months. Nine full moons. No sign of Lux. I was desperate to see her now, convinced she was the only one who might be able to bring me back, to fasten me again to the hours. The night Martha died was a bullet, lodged in my chest. I hadn't spoken of it to anybody, not to Friar, who'd been there, not to Magnusson, my closest friend, not even to Fancy, who was now eight months pregnant. I knew the bullet needed to be excised, but the only person I felt safe excising it with was Lux. I had to go back to that night, relive it in order to put distance between myself and the experience. Until I did, I'd be stuck in that moment, watching her die over and over again.

A storm's coming.

I was haunted by Martha's last words.

On the morning after the tenth full moon, Lux walked into the dining hall with a boy. His skin was a few shades darker than hers, his hair a mass of black curls. He wore a puzzled look on his face. I knew immediately it was Benno.

I felt both happiness and fury at the sight of her. I'd thought I might never see her again. I thought she might have abandoned us, abandoned
me
. I would not have been able to withstand that. Where had she been? Why had she taken so long to come back?

“How long has it been?” asked Lux.

Our positions had been reversed. Normally I was the one asking her how much time had gone by in the outside world.

“Ten months,” I said.

Lux winced. “Jesus. Joseph, I'm sorry.” She gave me a beseeching look, letting me know there was much to be said but our conversation would have to wait. First things first. This startled young man.

She put her hand on the child's back. “This is Benno. Benno, this is my good friend Joseph.”

“Why are you dressed like that?” asked the boy. He looked around the dining hall. “Why are you all dressed like that? What is this place?”

Lux smiled at him. “Welcome to Greengage, sweetheart.”

His mouth fell open.

“You didn't tell him where you were bringing him?” I asked.

“Not exactly.”

“
This
is where you were, Mom? This place? For a year?”

So a year had passed when she'd stayed through the full moon. Her life must have been in complete and utter disarray when she got home. Now I understood why this boy was standing in front of me. There would have been no way to explain where she'd been other than bringing him here.

“What do you know about us?” I asked him.

“That you're a commune.”

“We are not a commune. We're a working farm—”

Lux sighed. “Okay, Benno. I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but you know how in
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
Lucy goes through the wardrobe and it's not an ordinary wardrobe, it leads to Narnia? To another world? Well, this is the same. Only the fog is like the wardrobe and Greengage is what's on the other side. Only Greengage isn't really another world. It's our world, just—”

Brevity had never been Lux's strong suit. “Young man, it's 1908 here. Nineteen seventy-nine—”

“It's 1981 back home, Joseph,” Lux said, shrugging, as if to soften the blow.

Nineteen eighty-one? Another two years had passed? Was there anything that I could count on?

Benno looked from me to his mother and back to me again. “Why is it only 1908?”

“Because we got stuck here,” I said.

“Why?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, do you like being stuck?”

“No, we don't like being stuck.”

“Then why don't you leave?” he asked.

My head pulsed, the beginning of a migraine. The sun was far too bright.

“You'll have to pardon me. I'm not feeling well at the moment.” I could barely converse about normal things like crops and weather, never mind be expected to indoctrinate another stranger into our situation in Greengage.

“Ask Fancy. She'll explain everything,” I said.

I caught my sister's eye; she nodded, got up from the table, and approached us.

“She's pregnant!” gasped Lux. “Fancy's pregnant?”

I left the dining hall. A few minutes later Lux came running after me.

“I had no choice. I knew he wouldn't believe it until he saw it,” she said.

All I wanted was to retreat back to the house. I'd been waiting for months. I needed her to attend to me. I'd forgotten she'd have needs as well.

“Joseph, please. I never stopped thinking about you, about Greengage, but I couldn't return. Benno was living with my parents in Newport. It was so terrible. It took me a year to get him back. He's just come home and we came straight here. You can trust him. He won't tell anybody about you, I swear.”

“This is not some sideshow. We are not animals in a zoo.”

Her face collapsed, and even though I felt guilty—Lux was the last person in the world who would exploit us—I couldn't control my emotions.

“I would never—you've never…,” she stammered.

“Go back to your son,” I said harshly.

But she didn't have to go back. Fancy brought him to us. So I was forced to listen as Lux told Benno our story.

She began on April 18, 1906, the morning of the earthquake. She told him how the wall of fog had encircled us. She explained in detail about the full moon nights. How time sped up. And she ended with her fatal mistake, accidentally staying through the full moon.

“I was on my way back to you. I was leaving the night before the full moon. I thought I had plenty of time,” she said to Benno. “But I didn't.”

I registered Lux's omission. She hadn't used Martha's death as an excuse. Once again, I was overcome with guilt. I wasn't fit to be in public.

“I'm very glad you're finally here,” said Fancy, holding out a hand to Benno. “We've been waiting for you a long time.”

“You have?” The boy's cheeks grew pink with pleasure.

Thank God for my sister, doing my job, taking over for me, making the boy feel welcome.

“Certainly. We knew your mother was bringing you, we just didn't know when. We've got your bedroom all set up,” she said.

Lux flashed Fancy a grateful smile.

“I have a bedroom?” Benno asked.

“Of course. But I imagine you're hungry. Shall we get a bite at the dining hall before I take you to the house?”

“What kind of food do you have at the dining hall?”

“Pancakes. Bacon. Cornbread. If you're lucky, some of yesterday's leftover rhubarb pie.”

Fancy led Benno back across the meadow.