The Hunger Moon

by Suzanne Matson

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Renata said. “You just make me feel like a pig, is all.”

  By the time the movie ended, Renata thought it was too late for June to go home, even in a cab.

  “I’ll be fine,” June said.

  “This city is dangerous at night,” Renata told her. “Don’t you watch the news? Just sleep here on the sofa bed and I’ll run you home in the morning.”

  Renata lent June a nightgown and brought out some sheets and blankets. Then she looked in on Charlie again. When she entered her own bed, she fell asleep instantly, spreading out to fill the whole space.

  ELEANOR BEGAN EVERY YEAR with a complete physical. Her doctor for the last twenty years had once been a student of Robert’s; he knew her very well. When Eleanor forgot her appointment this year, even though she had written it on the calendar, his office called to reschedule. On Monday the ninth, she took a cab to Dr. Brewster’s office.

  “Eleanor, you’re looking as beautiful as ever. Feeling okay?”

  “I can’t complain, Ned.”

  “Still getting out, doing things?”

  “Yes, except driving. I’m not comfortable with that anymore. I’ve asked Janice to sell my car for me.”

  “You won’t even miss it, now that you live in town.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “What about your state of mind? Any blues? Sleeplessness? Nervousness?”

  “I’m probably more crotchety than ever, but no. My mood is fine. My memory seems to be going, though. I completely forgot that I had an appointment with you last week.”

  “Lots of people forget their appointments. My own memory’s shot. Lucy has to remind me as I go out the door in the morning where we’re going for dinner, and then, because she knows me, she calls in the afternoon to remind me again. I wouldn’t worry about a little absentmindedness.”

  Ned prodded and thumped her, and dotted the cold disk of the stethoscope across her back. She had always been at home around medical people, because of Robert. Hospitals and clinics did not make her anxious. They were places where the world behaved in an orderly fashion. Though illness might strike unpredictably, the doctors and nurses themselves had procedures to follow, and a rational pattern to their actions.

  “Your blood pressure is a little higher than I’d like, Eleanor.” He consulted her chart. “Still taking the Aldactazide?”

  She nodded.

  “Any dizziness, headaches?”

  “Some dizziness once in a while.”

  “Okay, let’s get another reading next week. Just stop in some morning early in the day and the nurse will take it. If it’s still high, we’ll adjust the dose. I’m going to send you over to the lab now,” Ned said. “We’ll do the usual workup—blood count, electrolytes. Anything else in particular you’re concerned about?”

  She shook her head. Aside from a few chronic issues, mainly her blood pressure, arthritis, and hiatal hernia, Eleanor knew that at seventy-eight she was as healthy as a horse. Now that she had a new hip, she thought she was probably good for another twenty years. Her sister, Isabel, had finally succumbed to metastasized skin cancer two years earlier. It had been a slow and painful death, and her husband had been there until the end, with the bedpans, IV tubes, and a hospital bed he had bought for the living room of their Palm Beach condominium. Isabel had been so groundlessly worried about symptoms she exaggerated her whole adult life that everyone including herself was astonished that a painless mole on her back the size of a ladybug had finally killed her. It was odd burying a sister, even a sister you weren’t close to. No one, not even a spouse, had shared the moments that formed the basic core of a person like one’s sibling. With Isabel, Eleanor said good-bye to the only living companion of her childhood.

  It was Isabel’s death that set Eleanor thinking about her own. As she watched her birds come and go on the deck, Eleanor thought about preparations. Not that she thought her time was short. But Eleanor had always packed early for trips, had moved through life with organized closets and drawers, daily lists, and five-year plans. She hated to be taken unaware, and early on had formed the habit of being fully dressed at eight A.M. so that no one would catch her in her pajamas.

  The other night she had had a marvelous dream in which Robert appeared in black tie and tails, asking her to dance. As they waltzed around and around in some magnificent chamber, Eleanor kept thinking, But he doesn’t dance; Robert has never been able to dance. Death must have taught him a few things.

  When she was first widowed, Eleanor negotiated nightly with the dark in their bedroom for any kind of sign from him while she slept. If it came, she never remembered it in the morning. But this invitation to dance, unasked for, unexpected, now teased her mind like a coded message, like a love letter in a language she could only half read.

  WHEN JUNE CAME OVER THE NEXT DAY, she was practically bursting with excitement. She had just received a letter from one of her instructors inviting her to a special class with some famous choreographer. As June rattled on, Eleanor began looking around; speaking of mail, when had she last received any?

  “Not everyone gets invited to these master classes, you know; it’s an honor. But the best thing about it is that you get to know these really connected people. It can be almost like an audition if they have their own company—”

  “June, would you run down and see if I have any mail?” Eleanor fished for the key to the box.

  She noticed that June looked hurt.

  “I’m sorry for interrupting you, dear. What were you saying? It’s just that when you mentioned mail, I remembered that I hadn’t received any for the longest time.”

  When June returned, her hands were full. “I’d say you had a few days’ worth here, Mrs. MacGregor.”

  Eleanor stared at the pile. It did seem to be a lot. She flipped through the envelopes, becoming agitated. What were all these bank letters? As June started cleaning the bathroom, Eleanor sat at her desk with her stack of mail and opened each envelope with a neat slit. She threw the advertising circulars directly into the wastebasket and put the electric and phone bills to one side. Then she began opening the letters from the bank; there were four of them. She read the overdraft notices, uncomprehending. She had never overdrawn her bank account in her life. Every month she deposited her social security and annuity checks, which were more than enough to cover her monthly expenses. Someone had better take responsibility for this, she thought. There was no reason why she should be put to aggravating inconvenience because of some incompetent worker at the bank.

  She checked her bank balance and saw that it should be around two thousand dollars, just as she thought. Then it occurred to her to look in her purse where she put her checks for deposit. There, neatly tucked in the zippered pocket with her deposit slip, was a bundle of checks totaling just over four thousand dollars: social security, two interest checks from annuities, and a pension check. Oh, how stupid of her; how very, very stupid. She had entered the deposit in her checkbook, but had never made the trip to the bank. She blamed the holidays, which, thank goodness, were behind her. All her routines had been upset by the unusual amount of visiting she had done in the last two weeks of December.

  She examined the bank notices again. The checks presented for payment had been honored, since she had a companion savings account, but she was being charged twenty dollars per overdraft, a total of eighty dollars. Eleanor dropped her head in her hands. It seemed this kind of mix-up was happening to her more and more often, and she couldn’t say why. She was not supposed to make mistakes like this; she was the one who sorted out other people’s confusion. Hadn’t it fallen to her to convince her fearful, aging mother that the meter reader was not a German spy? And wasn’t it rational, patient Eleanor who had talked Robert back into the house when he stood shivering barefoot on the porch in January, waiting for his dead brother to arrive for a visit? Was it her turn now to be ill, to be old?

  She shook her head briskly, to clear it of maudlin thoughts, tho
ugh the sour taste of stomach acid lingered in her mouth, and a headache had started up. She entered the eighty-dollar charge in her checkbook, and thought she might ask Janice to go to the bank for her.

  Her daughter emerged from the bathroom, sponge in hand.

  “I think we need to put cleanser on the grocery list,” she said. “Do you want me to go to the store now?”

  “Yes, Jan, and would you take my bank deposit to my branch for me at the same time? I need to get these checks in right away.”

  “Sure.”

  “When you come home, dear, your father will probably be here, and we can eat.”

  “My father?”

  Eleanor stared at her impatiently. “Janice, get going. We don’t want the bank to close.”

  “Mrs. MacGregor, it’s me, June. Not Janice.”

  “I don’t think Peter will be eating with us tonight. Didn’t he have chorale practice?”

  “Mrs. MacGregor, your son is in New Hampshire, and your daughter is in Cambridge. I’m June. I work for you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I want you to quit arguing with me, young lady, and do what I asked you to. You don’t need to read those, they’re all made out. Just skedaddle with them to the bank.”

  “Mrs. MacGregor, this deposit slip is dated almost a month ago. Do you want me to write in a new date?”

  “If it makes you happy.” Eleanor’s voice was querulous.

  “You know, you could get these checks to go directly to your bank account, and you would never have to worry about getting them in on time.”

  “Don’t tell me how to run my affairs, miss.”

  “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.

  SHE 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.

  JUNE 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.

  THAT AFTERNOON AT MRS. MACGREGOR’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.”

  AT FOUR-THIRTY JUNE 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.