Gateway to the Moon_A Novel

by Mary Morris

  As a girl she used to have dreams. She could be in the mountains in a blizzard or on a jungle path and all of sudden the mountains would recede, the snow stop, the jungle disappear, and she’d be walking up her front steps. She’d be coming home. But where would home be now? Is this home? The moon is rising higher and higher, and brighter, into the sky. She will not sleep tonight. She can take pills or drink whiskey or do push-ups all night and still she will be awake. Now she recalls that she felt like this at another time in her life, a time that seems so long ago—when she was pregnant with Jeremy. She couldn’t sleep. He was due in July and it was only June, but she was wide awake.

  She cleaned cabinets and scrubbed floors. She shelved books that had been lying in piles and threw out clothing she’d meant to toss months before. In the morning Nathan woke and found neat packages of shoes and coats and sweaters to give away, books to send down to the Strand. He wondered if she was out of her mind.

  She mentioned her sleeplessness in passing to a neighbor in the building and the neighbor said with a knowing look in her eye, “Your baby’s coming now.”

  “But he’s not due for another month.”

  The neighbor just smiled as she wandered by. “No, he’s coming now.”

  Two nights later her water broke and Jeremy was born, perfect, fully formed, four weeks before his due date. The doctor told her he’d heard of women about to give birth who also found themselves wide awake. There is no medical explanation, the doctor said. Perhaps it is a shift in the hormones. Perhaps nesting is in the genes. For whatever reason women about to give birth often find themselves unable to sleep. But she isn’t giving birth to anything right now.

  Perhaps she should try for another child. But what if it is another boy? She doesn’t think she can actually handle it. She wanted a little girl. Someone with whom to get her nails done and to see Broadway musicals. She doesn’t think she can handle any more all-day weekend soccer games or Sunday football. She wants a girl to curl up with in their pajamas and paint their toes. Perhaps she should look into adopting a little girl from China. Or perhaps she should volunteer for something or take a class in desert ecology. As she ponders the moon, staring into its brilliant, blue face, Rachel Rothstein wonders what it will take to make her yawn, stretch, and go to sleep.

  Someone is staring at her, and she knows it is Nathan. She feels the eyes burning into her. The boys wouldn’t have hesitated to jump into her lap, but Nathan stands in the doorway. She doesn’t need to turn from the window to see that he has that look she’s seen when he’s about to give a patient a bad prognosis. Years ago she found this held-back, assessing-the-situation stare appealing, even sexy. It is what makes him a good doctor. His diagnostic abilities. The way he can stand back and appraise. There is no emotion, no weakness in him at all. It makes him an outstanding pediatric cardiologist. And a cold husband. And he learned this from his own father, didn’t he? That judgmental man. If only Nathan didn’t feel as if he had to prove something all the time.

  She stares back at him. “What?”

  “Why are you up?” It isn’t so much a question as an accusation. It is the way he always says things. Is that what you’re going to wear? Is that what’s for dinner? Didn’t you invite the Adelmans? Because he already knows the answer to all the questions he asks. In fact Nathan never asks a question, it seems to Rachel, to which he doesn’t already know the answer.

  “I am up because I can’t sleep.” Isn’t that why most people are up at this hour, she wants to add. But she pauses, thinking that she should get up and soothe him. She can take away the fears that plague him—whatever they are. She can touch him and say, “I am not going anywhere. I am not leaving you.” Because he has been left. He has been alone. He tries to pretend that it doesn’t haunt him. The way his father walked out one day when he was twelve. The annual birthday card he received with a check, always for fifty dollars, until his father died. The things he won’t talk about. She had tried, for years, to love his hurt away, but this wall stands between them and at times it seems as if it grows thicker and more solid. She fears he has become impenetrable. “I am awake…” she hesitates, “because of the moon.”

  “The moon?”

  She pats the space beside her. “Come,” she says. “Sit down.”

  “I have a procedure at six a.m.” He frowns. “I need to get some sleep.”

  Rachel nods. All the more reason to sit down, she wants to say, but instead she replies, “Just for a moment.” She always feels guilty for taking up his time. As if these few minutes she wants will make the difference whether a child survives or doesn’t. She can’t bear the burden that places on him. And still. What if there is only this moment during which they will say the things they need to say to each other? What if this supermoon enables them to be honest with each other the way they once were so many years ago? She wants to lie in the blue light beside him and tell him the truth and have him do the same—whatever the truth is.

  Nathan moves across the room, his eyes not yet adjusted to the dark. He holds his hand out like a blind man, afraid he will bump into the corners of tables or step on the dog. As he approaches the sofa she holds out her hand. “Here. Sit next to me.”

  With a sigh Nathan sits down beside her but not so they touch. There is a space between them. Rachel is more and more aware of this. The small space that has grown larger, into a crevasse. It will be a canyon soon. She thinks of the lyrics to that Leonard Cohen song. The one about the light coming through the cracks. What song is it? She used to know them all. Every song. Every lyric. Now they elude her.

  “Our new babysitter, Miguel. He tells me that there is scientific proof that the full moon impacts our sleep cycles.”

  “Miguel?”

  “Yes, he wants to be an astronomer.” Actually Miguel hasn’t told her this. It is an ambition that Rachel has given to him. She wants Miguel to succeed. She wants him to become a famous astronomer and thank her when he wins a national science prize. That is one thing Rachel likes to do. She likes to make people believe they can succeed—even if she suspects they cannot.

  Nathan shakes his head. It is the first time he’s heard the name of the new babysitter. In fact it is the first time he’s heard that she’s hired a babysitter. “Where did you find him?”

  She can’t tell him the truth. She can’t tell him that she drove out of Santa Fe into the pueblos and the Hispanic villages where she put up her ad in gas stations and general stores. She didn’t move her family out here for her boys to have the same nannies as they had on Madison Avenue. She wants them to be different from everyone else. She wants them to be surprised by life and all that it has to offer. “He saw my ad at the Santa Fe Public Library. He’s working on a project that I don’t quite understand. It’s very scientific.”

  There is a pause, silence.

  “And he comes highly recommended.”

  Nathan doesn’t ask by whom. He breathes another heavy sigh. “Are you happy here? Are you happy with your decision?” She waits until she is sure he is finished. “Because this was your decision.”

  She pats his hand. “No, it was our decision…”

  Nathan gently pulls his hand away. “No, not really. It’s what you wanted. I was fine to go along. Because I wanted you to be happy.” A quiet comes over the two of them because they both realize he is speaking in the past tense. “I want you to be happy.”

  She glances over at him in the moonlight and a feeling goes through her. Something she hasn’t honestly felt in a while. She curls closely against his side. “Of course I’m happy. Why wouldn’t I be?” She runs her finger along his arm, making a circular motion, a swirl that seems to deepen and deepen. If she stops, the moment will be gone so she keeps at it. She leans into him more closely. She wants him to kiss her. It is that simple. A kiss.

  Nathan sighs, leaning back. “Shall we try and get some sleep?” He catches her fingers in his own like a web. Then he tugs her from the couch and leads her into their room.


  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE STREET OF THE DEAD—1492

  Inez Cordero stands outside her father’s study. She’s bringing him his supper as she does every evening at this time. A plate of cheese, fig jam, bread, and tea. A cooked egg. She’s holding his tray and hoping he won’t notice that her hands are trembling. Inez pauses, trying to catch her breath. She prays that he won’t detain her. Javier is waiting for her. It’s all she can think about. Every day she can barely wait for his touch. Every evening she burns for it. Soon she can slip away.

  Inez pushes open the door. Her father is hunched over the paper he is writing, dipping his stylus into the inkwell. He’s been studying a document that is causing him distress. At first he is unhappy with this intrusion. But as she settles the tray at the end of his desk, he looks up. Diego Cordero sees that it is his daughter. His beloved daughter. It is difficult for him to grasp how beautiful she has become.

  It seems as if just weeks ago she was a little girl, sitting on his lap as he concocted tales of dragons and unicorns, mermaids and pirates. She liked the pirate stories best. Accounts of swaggering men who went to sea and found adventures there. He invented sea monsters to frighten her and mermaids to beguile her. Now here is this woman with a thin waist and gentle curves, creamy skin and jet-black hair. So like the way her mother had once been. It is as if Diego is falling in love all over again.

  Unfortunately it has begun to occur to him that she is beautiful to others as well. Daily, it seems, suitors are coming to the door. Young men who glimpse her praying in the cathedral or buying tomatoes at the market with her maid. She turns so many away that Diego imagines a river of tears trailing from his house. But there is more to Inez than her beauty. She has a brain. A very good brain. He taught her to read and write himself. But he never imagined that every morning she would sneak one book from his shelves and replace it by the end of the day. It amuses him to find the space in his library where the book is missing and try to guess its contents. And she has a good heart. Once she nursed the tiniest sparrow back to health with drops of warm milk and gruel. Diego never imagined the love that could fill his heart until his daughter was born. He loves his wife, but Inez occupies his whole being.

  As she arranges the tray beside him, he clasps her arm. “Thank you, my dear.”

  She kisses his hand. “It is my pleasure, Father, to bring you whatever you need. Is there anything else I can do for you?” Every night she asks this question, knowing that he’ll tell her that it is enough. He does not notice the impatience in her voice or see how longingly she looks toward the door.

  “If you can greet my guests when they arrive. I am having a meeting here tonight.” Inez breathes a heavy sigh. She doesn’t think she can wait a moment longer and yet she will have to wait at least another half an hour until the men arrive. She will not be able to leave before then. She is glad that her father is preoccupied because he does not notice the flush to her cheeks, the faint hint of rouge on her lips or smell the almond soap with which she bathes, the lavender drops that she has placed behind each ear, in the bed of her elbows, and on her breasts. He does not notice that she has let her hair down instead of wearing it up as she does most days. He is thinking about the meeting at his house.

  Diego Cordero is angered that the Inquisition continues to persecute even the converted Jews and exacts such a heavy price. Didn’t he receive the sacraments of the church, as did all of his converso friends? So what if they have converted only in name. The authorities don’t really know that. Still they are taxed and persecuted more than any other group. Their money is used to wage war on the Muslims—all in the name of unifying Spain. And still they must submit to the ridiculous curfew that the authorities claim is for their own good.

  “Yes, I will wait until they are here.” She lets her hand rest on her father’s shoulder. “But you work too hard. You need to rest.”

  “I will,” he says, “after some things are settled.” He nods wearily, rubbing his eyes. It is true. He does need to rest. He puts down the magnifying glass that he uses to read. But rest is something he cannot afford. There is a meeting tonight in this very room. In a short while Pedro Fernández de Benadeva, who serves as the cathedral’s butler, and Adolfo Piera, a wealthy merchant, will be coming to the house. These secret meetings have been going on for weeks. Inez is weary of them. She sees how much strain it puts on her father. She doesn’t understand what it is that upsets them so much except it seems as if it has something to do with taxes. Why would taxes bring her father so much distress? And why should this matter to her? All she can think of is Javier, who is waiting for her.

  Inez sits on a bench in the courtyard, gazing up at the stars. It is a clear, warm night of early spring. In a few months the city will be blazing with heat, but now the air is soothing. She sniffs the scent of jasmine already in the air. And yet she is anxious. Javier waits for her at the end of the Street of the Dead where she lives in the heart of the ghetto. This had once been the street of the coffin makers and has kept its grim name. He will be waiting as he does every evening until she can get away. How long will he wait? She smiles. She knows the answer. He will wait until she comes. Neither of them can stay away.

  They have known each other since they were children. They met at the cathedral where their parents worshipped side by side. But it was only in the past year that Javier began to look at her differently. She was fifteen after all. He noticed how she had changed. She was no longer a girl. She had blossomed into a beautiful woman. At first he came to the house and they walked together with her mother or her chaperone, but as their passion grew, they began to meet in secret as they do now almost every night at eight o’clock and say goodbye to each other at ten just before the gates of the ghetto close.

  But it is already after eight and still she cannot leave. The moments seem endless. Her mother has retired for the evening so Inez must wait to greet their guests. At last there is a knock on the door and she rushes to open it. Pedro Fernández and Adolfo Piera stand at the door with worried looks on their faces. She brings glasses for sherry and trays of cheese and sweets. She slips out. As soon as she hears the muffled voices in her father’s study, Inez knows that she will no longer be needed. She grabs her rose-colored mantilla, the one that brightens her features and sets off her dark hair, the one that Javier likes to lift gently from her head as he kisses her. She tiptoes to the front door, undoes the latch, and slips out into the warm spring evening.

  Inez races through the winding streets of the ghetto of Seville. She knows all the shortcuts. The tunnels and secret passageways, all the paths that the Jews use to escape when their persecutors come to punish them, and now she uses them to race to her lover. She wishes her family no longer lived in the ghetto. They had been planning to move for years since her parents’ conversion just before she was born. Inez has no memory of being anything other than a New Christian. She was baptized into the church days after she was born. Her father, a successful merchant and trader in pepper and spices, had no trouble leaving his Jewish life behind. He was as indifferent to being a Jew as he is to being a Christian. It is a matter of expediency. Whatever enables him and his family to live with the most comfort and ease. It is not that he is gluttonous or without beliefs. He believes in life and he believes in his love for his fellow man. For Diego Cordero, what a man believes about his god is only the business of that man.

  After the massacres and the forced conversions, it had been easy for Diego Cordero and his wife, Olivia, to convert. They had kept the Law of Moses out of convention. It was easy for them to let go of many of the rituals—though Diego had never resigned himself to the eating of pork. And they still kept the Sabbath as they had before. But for years now they have been good Christians. They follow the teachings of the Catholic Church. They go to mass. They kneel. They take communion and ask for absolution for their sins.

  Still they have not moved away from the ghetto. Her mother loves the old stone walls of their house, the coolness of its inn
er courtyard filled with plants and flowers. She loves the insularity of their home, and so each time when moving is discussed, Olivia has said no. “This is my home. No matter where we worship and what we believe.” So Javier, who is from an aristocratic Old Christian family, comes to meet Inez in the ghetto. It is easier for him to bribe the gatekeeper after curfew to let him out than it would be for Inez to bribe the gatekeeper to let her in. It is easier to be an Old Christian in Andalusia than a converted Jew.

  She grips her shawl around her chin as she runs. It is dark and she is very late. They will have so little time together. And what if tonight he has left, thinking she might not come? But as she rounds the corner at the Gate of the Butchers there he is. He leans against the wall, watching the street. Even from a distance his dark eyes are flashing. His thick slicked-back black hair shines in the moonlight, as does his silky green tunic. It is as if he were a dragon, spewing fire. “Inez,” he whispers as low as the wind, as soft as a kiss, so that at times she wonders if he really said it, if he is even there and not just some vision she has conjured. When she hesitates for an instant, he calls to her again, louder and more insistent. “Inez, I thought you would never get here.”

  Without a word she runs to him and he catches her in his arms. She drops her shawl, and he kisses her neck, her throat, her mouth. Then he pauses, whispering into her ear, “I was so afraid you weren’t coming.”