Valley of the Moon (37 page)

He coughed. “That summer. Nineteen sixty-four. The last summer you were at Lapis Lake? I knew you didn't want to be here. What was I thinking? That we'd have this, the two of us, forever?” His voice cracked on
forever
.

“Dad, stop. You have to conserve your energy. You can't afford—”

He looked at me with an anguished face. “Just listen. Please.”

I sat back in my chair, my heart racing.

“You were a teenager. You were bored. You wanted a bigger life. Of course you did—that was only natural. But I couldn't bear to see it end. Only a damned fool thinks paradise will last.” He ran his hand over his scalp. “It can't last; it's not meant to. Look at this place. Run-down, falling apart, mice in the rafters. Why the hell would you have wanted to stay here?”

Was he seriously asking me that question? “Because it
was
paradise, Dad.”

“It was?”

“Yes,” I said softly, letting the truth of that sink in.

“But you—”

I interrupted him. If I didn't say this now, I never would.

“I feel like I've spent all my life trying to find my way back to Lapis Lake, not literally the lake, but, you know, you. Us. The way we were. The way things were here.”

He blinked hard.

“I should have come when you asked me to. When you first brought Benno. It was such a nice gesture for you to invite me along. To give us a fresh start.”

“I didn't hear back from you. I thought maybe you didn't get my letter.”

“I got it. I was just—ashamed. My life was such a mess. If I'd have come back, the person I was then, I would have ruined this place for you. I didn't want to do that. My memories of us at the lake are sacrosanct. What you taught me here. How you believed in me here. The way you loved me here—that's what I built my life on. That's how I got to this. To who I am now. To Benno. To Vivi.”

To Joseph.

He hung his head in despair. “It was my fault. I was such a stubborn, narrow-minded ass. I just couldn't get over my disappointment that you hadn't made the same choices I had, that you didn't value the same things. I'm not talking about wanting to be at the lake—well, maybe that was the beginning of it—but I'm talking about school. Your education. The ways you got distracted.”

Distracted.
That was a civilized way of putting it. Dash. Dropping out of college and moving to San Francisco. Getting pregnant at nineteen.

“Well, Dad, I certainly gave you every reason to be disappointed. I was young and stupid. I lost myself for a while. For longer than a while, actually.”

“You didn't lose yourself, Lux. I left you and I'll never forgive myself for that. I made some attempts over the years to make amends, to reach out to you, but it hasn't been enough.” He steepled his fingers in order to stop his hands from shaking. “Benno. Vivi being so sick. How do you manage?” he rasped.

I went inside and got a box of tissues and a glass of water. I placed them on the table next to him. He took a sip of the water and stared out at the lake, trying to compose himself.

“I manage, Dad, because I am loved. Because I found my own Lapis Lake. My own little paradise.”

“Noe Valley?”

“No, no.” I took a deep breath. “Greengage, Dad.”

“Greengage?” he echoed.

I hadn't spoken the name to him since that terrible visit to Newport in 1980.

“Benno and I go there pretty regularly now. It's where Vivi's father, Joseph, is from.”

His eyes narrowed. “Your mother told me about this Joseph. Where is he?”

“He's in Greengage.”

“Well, why isn't he with you now? He's got a daughter—a deathly ill daughter!”

“He would be with us if he could. I promise you.”

He squinted in disbelief.

“Dad, you're just going to have to take my word for it. We're doing everything we can to be with each other. It's just complicated. Getting to Greengage isn't easy.”

I grabbed a tissue and pressed it to my eyes, willing myself not to cry.

“I don't understand, Lux,” he finally said.

“That's because it's impossible to understand.”

He took my hand. It had been years, perhaps going back to childhood, since my father had held my hand.

“Tell me. You love this Joseph? You love this place, Greengage?”

“More than anything!” I cried. “And Benno loves it, too. And Vivi will, I know it, if I can just get her there. All this time, I've been living two lives. My heart in two different worlds. It's just been so hard.”

I began to sob. I had my eyes shut but I could feel his body shaking—he was crying, too. I breathed raggedly, trying to catch my breath. After a few minutes, I looked at him and he nodded.

“Lux?”

“Yeah” was all I could manage to say.

He gave me a heartbreaking smile. “Darling girl.”

Would anybody ever call me
darling girl
again?

“You deserve a world that wants you,” he said.

A month later I got the call that he'd died in his sleep. Benno, Vivi, and I flew back to Newport for the funeral, then the following day we drove north to Lapis Lake to scatter his ashes.

Vivi dropped a handful of ashes on the ground by the car. “Bye-bye,” she said, clutching my pant leg. She was too young to understand what was going on, how final death was. That she'd never see her grandfather again.

I picked her up. She burrowed her face into the crook of my neck. She spent a lot of time there. If a neck could have had a head-shaped indentation worn in it, mine would.

Benno was somber, placing handfuls of ashes in carefully chosen spots that my father had loved. At the base of Mount Fort. At the foot of the dining hall stairs.

I rubbed my father's ashes into the porch railing. How many times had he sat there, a book cracked open, reading to me? The smell of Coppertone drifting through the air.

“I'm going to walk out on the branch one last time,” I said, just before we were about to go.

“Careful,” said my mother. “Don't fall into the water.”

I took a mental snapshot of her sitting on the steps, a steaming mug of tea in her hand. A sight I'd never seen and would likely never see again.

“Don't worry. I've done this hundreds of times,” I said, traversing the maple bough, arms outstretched for balance.

I saw my name from three feet away. Etched into the wood with the dull blade of a Swiss Army knife.

LUX WAS HERE
.

Years ago, my father had made me sand it out of the bough.

Years ago, he'd carved it back in.

F
inally we were allowed to take Vivi home from the hospital. She'd had a procedure called a radiofrequency ablation. It was a last-ditch effort to stop her ever more frequent episodes. Dr. Walker told us that in most cases the procedure was ninety-five percent effective, but Vivi had been in the hospital for nearly three weeks, and when she got out, she was weaker than ever. It hadn't made a damn difference.

Only six months had passed, but she was a shadow of the little girl she'd been on her first birthday. She spent most of her days under a blanket watching reruns of
Leave It to Beaver
. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver,” she'd say to us when we walked into the room. She had an uncanny talent for mimicry. She belonged on the stage, not on the couch.

She learned how to live with the constant light-headedness. She walked in a wide stance, making sure one foot was firmly planted before shuffling the other foot forward. She'd throw up in the morning upon waking, and once more in the late afternoon. She was thirsty all the time: always sucking on ice chips. But when she saw me or her precious Ba, she'd shriek with glee, hold out her arms, and wave like a concertgoer, and for a second the old Vivi would bust through.

Benno had captured this moment perfectly with his camera, and I'd had the photo framed. In fact, Benno had documented just about every minute of Vivi's life. He couldn't stop taking pictures of her; it was a compulsion. I'd tucked every photo carefully away. A visual record for Joseph, to supplement my journal. Vivi loved being photographed, of course. She had a particular face she'd put on when she knew her brother had trained his lens on her. She'd dip her head and bat her eyelashes. “Act natural, Viv!” he'd cry. “Pretend I'm not taking a picture.”

She wasn't capable of it.

In January, my mother had sold the house in Newport, donated her old Lilly Pulitzer shifts to Goodwill, and moved into the basement apartment at 428 Elizabeth Street. We told her about Greengage then. Whether she believed us or not, I didn't know, but she believed we believed, and that was enough for now.

She'd taken over Vivi's care during the days while I was at work. All in all, we had a fine support system set up, and Vivi couldn't have been more loved. Still, we all knew the truth. These days were numbered. If I didn't get Vivi back to Greengage soon—I couldn't bear to think of what would happen.

“I don't know if we should bring her,” said Benno. “The party did her in.”

It was 11:00
A.M.
, usually Vivi's most wide-awake time, but she was asleep on the couch. Yesterday we'd celebrated her half birthday with great fanfare. We'd taken her down to the Embarcadero to see the circus and then afterwards out to her favorite restaurant. She'd had one spoonful of ice cream and promptly thrown up. It was too much.

I understood Benno's reticence. This would be my twenty-seventh useless trip in a row to the Valley of the Moon, and I was despairing as well. In my darker moments I wondered if I was being punished for having Joseph's child. In my darkest moments I wondered if Vivi was being punished for being born. Did her existence break some fundamental law of time? Could a creature who was half of the future and half of the past live? Would we be banished from Greengage forever?

“Why don't I have Grandma take me?” said Benno. “If the fog is there, I'll call you from the parking lot. There won't be any traffic. You can borrow the Patels' car and be there in an hour and a half, tops.”

No, I couldn't take the chance. What if the fog was there? Sick or not, Vivi would have to go, as would I.

T
wo figures emerged from the fogbank. Lux looked exhausted and Benno was two, maybe three inches taller. How long had it been for them? Not for the first time, I was struck by how much easier I had it. I knew I'd see her every month the morning after the full moon, but when she said goodbye to me she never knew when she'd see me again.

She clutched something to her chest. A doll for Gennie? The doll slid out of her arms. The doll walked toward us. Then the doll began to trot.

“Vivi, wait!” Lux shouted.

The doll was a little girl with a head of black curls. She did a strange sort of stagger-run at first, ungainly, like a colt taking its first steps, but she gained strength as she went and soon she was cantering across the field. I heard my father's voice in my head.
“Faster, boy, faster.”

“Well, hello,” said Fancy as the girl stopped short in front of us.

Lux and Benno were halfway across the meadow, and Lux had a stricken look on her face. Had this girl sneaked through the fog with them somehow? Become separated from her family?

“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver,” the girl said.

“For God's sake,” said Fancy. “Would you look at her eyes?”

Lux and Benno ran up. Benno nodded solemnly at me and Lux squatted and grabbed the little girl by her chubby arms. “Don't you ever, ever do that again, Vivi.” Then she burst into tears. “Did you see, Benno? Did you see? She ran. She ran!” She pressed the girl to her chest. “Look at you. Look at you. Oh, you big, strong, beautiful girl.”

“Her eyes, Joseph. Her eyes,” said Fancy.

They were the exact same glacier blue as my own.

“Stop it,” said the little girl, trying to wriggle out from Lux's arms. “Mama, let me go.”