Valley of the Moon

by Melanie Gideon

  His face transformed into a mask of incredulity. “Good God.” He quickly walked away, leaving me to follow.

  It was exhausting, trying to act normal around her when what I really wanted to do was ply her with questions. Instead she plied me with questions—clearly she’d never spent time on a working farm. Still, she was not a prissy woman. She didn’t hold her breath in the pigsty, or shudder when she learned she would have to relieve herself in a privy. I could see she was fit. Her hands were red and rough like Martha’s; she used them to make a living.

  “Where in San Francisco do you reside?” I asked.

  “Noe Valley.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “At a pub.”

  “You’re a barkeep?”

  “I’m a waitress, but don’t look so shocked. Women bartend, too. Where are we going?”

  She was afraid I was taking her back to the fog. I have to admit, if I’d been told I’d traveled back in time nearly seventy years, I’d have run back to my own time as fast as I could. That would be most people’s natural reaction. Instead she’d worked hard to keep an open mind. She listened intently and soaked up every little detail, and gradually, over the course of the afternoon, I’d seen Greengage cast its spell on her. She hadn’t said anything to that effect, but it was written on her face—awe.

  Despite my misgivings about her, I was heartened to see Greengage had lost none of its charms. Indeed, it had a beauty and goodness that seemed to transcend questions like the ones we were grappling with today. If she really was from 1975 (and I still wasn’t convinced), I couldn’t begin to imagine the things she’d seen. The kind of life she lived. That our simple community had dazzled her gave me hope.

  All at once I realized how badly I wanted for her to be real. To be who she said she was.

  “I’m taking you to the house for a rest. I’m sure you must be fatigued.”

  She smiled. “I am. I am fatigued.”

  “We eat early. The dinner bell rings at six.”

  Her face clouded over. “I don’t have any money to pay for dinner. I didn’t bring any with me. I’m sorry.”

  That was four times in the last hour that she’d apologized. I couldn’t hold my tongue.

  “You must stop saying you’re sorry every other minute. It’s—there’s simply no need for it.” I stopped myself from saying how unattractive it was to hear a woman apologizing all the time. “There is no fee for dinner. You are our guest.”

  I hadn’t laid my hand on any currency in four months. That had been one of the unforeseen boons of our strange circumstances, not having to worry about money, dispensing it or making it.

  She stared at me, her color high.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” I said.

  “You’re right. I apologize too much. I hate that about myself.” She looked off into the middle distance. “I’ll help clean up, then.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “But everybody here pulls their weight. You just showed me that. I can’t take something from you without giving something back.”

  “You are our guest,” I repeated. “We don’t expect anything in return.”

  Her eyes welled up with sudden tears.

  —

  “Joseph, you old boot,” said Fancy. She sat on the front porch, waiting for us. “You’ve monopolized Lux for far too long. Give somebody else a chance.”

  “We were on a tour,” I said.

  “What did he show you? The boring workshop? The chicken coop? I would have taken you to meet Dear One.”

  Dear One, known to everybody else as Eleanor, was the daughter of Polly Bisbee (our childhood cook) and was Fancy’s closest friend. Dear One as in “Dear One, would you get me a cup of tea?” “Dear One, would you mind ever so much closing that window?” She’d been Fancy’s companion until my mother died, and then she became her lady’s maid. Fancy would never refer to her as a maid now. My sister had been slower to evolve than me, but eventually she had come around.

  Fancy and Eleanor were not permanent residents of Greengage. In fact, they’d arrived for their annual visit just days before the earthquake. It had taken them four weeks to travel by steamship from London to New York and then another week on the train from New York to San Francisco.

  “I would love to meet Dear One,” said Lux.

  Fancy jumped up from her chair. “We’re off, then!”

  “No, she is in need of a rest,” I said.

  Lux nodded at me gratefully. She’d been too polite to turn down Fancy’s invitation, but she really did need to sit down. She looked quite pale.

  “I suppose you’ve had quite a shock,” said Fancy.

  “Well, you’ve had quite a shock, too,” said Lux.

  Fancy was usually steadfastly upbeat, it was one of her great strengths. But this was not one of those times; she now slumped in despair. I drew my sister to me. She laid her head against my shoulder and sighed.

  “Yes, I guess we have,” she said.

  —

  Dinner was a strange affair. Some people came and paid their respects to Lux; they bobbed and curtseyed and welcomed her, making me feel I was sitting next to royalty. Others avoided her like a leper, going out of their way to bypass her, walking down another row so they wouldn’t risk having to say hello.

  It was terribly awkward. Twice I got up to leave and twice Martha stopped me.

  “They are looking to you to set an example,” she said. “They’re nervous. They don’t know how to make sense of what’s happening. Give them some time.”

  Lux was polite. She greeted everybody with the same warmth. She looked them in the eyes and shook their hands like somebody who wanted desperately to be accepted. She started on another round of I’m sorries—“Sorry for what’s befallen you,” “Sorry it hasn’t befallen me,” “Sorry I’m free and you’re not”—but I kneed her under the table and she immediately stopped.

  “Sorry,” she said to me under her breath. “This is just so weird. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Do something,” said Martha to me.

  I stood and clinked on my glass with a knife. The room quieted.

  “Listen up,” I said. “These are the facts. This is what we know. This woman, Lux, accidentally found her way here through the fog. It seems she can come and go through the fog, though we cannot.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to voice the unfathomable, that according to Lux, on the other side of the fogbank it was 1975. I paused, expecting somebody to start interrogating me about it, but the room was complicit with silence. We all needed some time to grapple with this news.

  “I know you want answers. You want to know what’s happening. What does this mean? Her arrival.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t think it means anything.”

  This was a lie. Her arrival changed everything and we all knew it, but because we didn’t know what it really meant for us, everybody agreed to let this lie stand for now.

  “Not for us, anyway. For us life goes on as it has for the past four months. Nothing has changed. We will get up in the morning and meet with our crews and put in a good day’s work, and then we will sleep, knowing we’ve earned our rest. And the next day we will wake up and do it all over again.”

  “Is she staying?” Matteo asked.

  I looked down at Lux.

  “I’d like to stay a few days, if you’ll let me,” she said quietly, so only I could hear.

  I fought to keep a neutral expression on my face, as if it didn’t matter to me whether she stayed or left.

  “For a while,” I confirmed. “Treat her like one of us.”

  “Yes, please,” said Lux. She got to her feet. “I don’t want any special treatment.”

  Oh, but she was special; this was clear the moment she stood. Even if she wasn’t from the future, she could travel freely through the fog and we could not. She blinked once, twice, and took her seat.

  —

  I sat on the porch in the dark. I couldn’t sleep; I’d
been sitting there for hours. I heard Lux before I saw her. The sound of her bare feet creeping down the stairs. The squeak of the door opening. She padded to the railing in a muslin nightgown (Fancy must have lent it to her), put her hands on the railing, arched her back, and sighed.

  I cleared my throat, announcing myself, and she jumped.

  “You could have told me you were there,” she said.

  “My apologies,” I said.

  My eyes had acclimated to the night long ago, so I took the opportunity to survey her unseen. I estimated her age as somewhere in her twenties. Her face was without wrinkles, her complexion fair but tanned by the sun. Her brown, shoulder-length hair had fallen out of its braid. She impatiently pushed her fringe to the side, exposing dark straight brows. She had a small but sturdy frame and was of medium height. I could smell Martha’s soap on her skin; it was unnerving.

  “Can I have one of those?” she asked.

  I gave her one of my precious cigarettes. She leaned forward and I lit it with a match. She inhaled deeply, held the smoke in her lungs and blew it out.

  “Do you still think I’m mad?” she asked.

  “I’m on the fence.”

  “Well, how do we get you off the fence?”

  “Do you have any identification?”

  “Not on me.” She thought for a moment. “Everything’s at the campsite.”

  “You could answer a few questions,” I said.

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Who’s the president of the United States?”

  “Gerald Ford,” she said without hesitation.

  “What number president is he?”

  “Thirty-eight.”

  “Who’s the prime minister of England?”

  “I have no idea. But I can tell you that in 1914, England, along with France, Russia, and Japan, will declare war on Germany. America will try and stay neutral, but finally in 1917 we’ll join the fight and help win the war, but at a terrible cost. Something like seventeen million people will die. Trench warfare. Gas. U-boats.” She shuddered. “World War I.”

  “World War I?”

  She looked at me calmly.

  “That implies there’s a World War II.”

  “From 1939 to 1945,” she said. “Something like seventy-five million casualties.”

  “Dear God. World War III?”

  “Not yet. But America just wrapped up a war with Vietnam.” She took another puff of her cigarette. “Oh, yeah, and a man walked on the moon.”

  I grunted with skepticism.

  She grinned. “I’m not pulling your leg. Neil Armstrong in 1969. Do you want to hear more? I could tell you about the Depression, about Prohibition, about the civil rights movement, about Martin Luther King, about Roe v. Wade. Abortion is legal now, by the way.”

  I held up my hand. “That’s quite enough, thank you. A few minutes of quiet, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course. You’ll want to take that all in,” she said a little smugly, pleased to have put on such a convincing show.

  The crickets chirped. A moth batted its wings futilely against a closed window. My mind reeled.

  “Don’t you want to ask me any questions?”

  “My questions were answered today when you took me on the tour,” she said.

  “Are you saying you believe me?”

  “No. Yes. I mean kind of. What else can I do? At some point you just have to sort of commit, right?”

  “Commit to what?”

  “This. Us. What’s happening. That I’m here. That you’re here. That this can’t be, and yet it is. It’s beyond the laws of nature, but until some other evidence surfaces to disprove you, I’m going to go along with all this, and maybe you’ll go along with it, too. What other choice do we have?” She shrugged.

  She’d just expressed the same conclusion I’d been coming to. Continuing to mistrust each other seemed like a waste of energy, at least for now.

  “Do you think we did something? To bring this on?” I asked.

  “Like what? What could you have possibly done?”

  She was right. We had done nothing but work hard to be self-sufficient and treat each other fairly and equitably.

  “You were happy?” she asked.

  “We were happy.”

  Clarification: most of us had been happy. The O’Learys hadn’t been happy. Paddy’s last words? “If we stay any longer, we’ll never leave.” How right he had turned out to be.

  “So. That’s not a crime. That’s what everybody wants.” She took another deep pull on the cigarette. “I have a joint back in my tent. I wish I’d brought it.”

  “A joint?”

  “Pot. Marijuana. Um, cannabis—I guess that’s the proper name. What do you call it?”

  “Hashish.”

  “Is it illegal? It’s illegal now.”

  “You could mail-order maple sugar hashish candy in the Sears, Roebuck catalog.”

  Lux laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m afraid I’m not.”

  She flicked the ash of her cigarette over the railing.

  “Are you married? Do you have children?” I asked her, changing the subject.

  She sat down in the rocking chair next to me. “I’m a widow. I live with my son, Benno. He’s five.”

  She said this dryly, with very little emotion.

  “My condolences.”

  “Yes, well, it was a while ago.”

  “Still, that must have been very difficult.”

  “He was in the army. He died in the war.”

  “The war with Vietnam?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is your son right now?”

  “He’s with my mother.”

  “You live with your parents, then? Siblings as well?”

  She gave me a strange look. “I live alone. Well, I have a roommate, Rhonda, but she’s barely ever home.”

  “Where do your parents reside?”

  “In Newport, Rhode Island.”

  “Across the country? Why aren’t they with you? However do you manage on your own without help?”

  She stood, walked down the stairs, and threw her cigarette in the dirt. “I manage just fine. Nobody lives with their parents anymore. Everybody leaves home. Everybody. It’s just what you do.”

  This was the moment when I fully believed she was from a different time. She could relay an encyclopedia’s worth of historical facts to me; she could tell me of every scientific, mathematical, and medical advancement; she could describe the plots of award-winning novels that hadn’t yet been written, hum the tunes of unheard operas and symphonies, tell me of new planets, new cocktails, new styles of clothing—but none of it would convince me more than this simple fact. She was alone, she and her son. This would have been a very rare scenario in my time.

  Lux walked back up the stairs. “I’ve got to get some sleep. What time do you wake up in the mornings?”

  “Five.”

  “Everybody gets up then?”

  “It depends on the crew.”

  “What crew will I be on?” She tipped her chin up, looking defiant, as if I were about to deny her the opportunity to be put to work.

  “What crew would you like to be on?”

  “Garden,” she said.

  “Fine. Garden starts at seven, but the breakfast bell rings at six.”

  “I’ll be up at five-thirty,” she said.

  “Do you have a watch?”

  “No, do you?”

  “I don’t need one. I wake up the same time every day.”

  “Same,” she said proudly. “See you at dawn.”

  I woke to the sound of something being poured, Martha filling the washbasin with hot water. Through the window I could see the first streaks of red in the sky. The sun hadn’t risen yet.

  I sat up in bed. “You don’t have to do that. I can do it myself.” I didn’t want her to wait on me—it made me uncomfortable.

  “It’s chilly in the mornings. You won’t be used to the cold hou
se.”

  I pulled back the covers and put my bare feet on the floor. The wood was freezing. I gave a little gasp.

  Martha dragged the rag rug to the side of the bed. “That’s where it belongs, not in the middle of the room.” She scowled and I felt guilty, as if I had been the one who moved the rug, though I wasn’t.

  “Joseph says you want to join the garden crew today.”

  “Yes, if that’s okay. Unless I’m needed elsewhere.”

  She looked impeccable, her hair swept back neatly into a bun. She wore a gray skirt and a spotlessly clean apron.

  “Where you work is entirely up to you, as I’m sure Joseph explained.” She eyed my skinny ankles suspiciously. “Although it’s a busy time of year in the garden. You’ll be harvesting. It’s backbreaking, repetitive work. Kneeling. Stooping over, picking, hauling baskets to the wagon.”

  “That won’t be a problem. I’m a waitress. I carry platters of food all day long. I can even carry a keg of beer up from the basement.” A pony keg, but still.

  She cocked her head as if trying to imagine me with a keg of beer on my shoulder. “The water’s getting cold,” she said.

  “Thank you. And next time—”

  She waved dismissively at me. “Yes, yes, you’ll get your own water. Don’t worry, I have no intention of being your servant.”

  —

  I dressed in the same outfit I’d had on yesterday. Skirt, blouse, and hiking boots. When I got downstairs, I found Fancy waiting for me.

  “Good morning!” she piped. “Did you sleep well?”

  I hadn’t slept much at all. I’d been too revved up after my conversation with Joseph, which for some reason had left me feeling exposed. Also, I couldn’t stop thinking about Benno. Day three without him. I missed him desperately.

  “I slept okay.”

  “Wonderful,” said Fancy. “Let’s go to the dining hall. I’m starving.”

  “Should we wait for Joseph and Martha?”

  “They left ages ago,” she said, linking her arm through mine.

  —

  A few minutes after we set out, the bell rang. Families streamed out of their cottages and the dormitories emptied. Children ran ahead of their parents, dogs at their feet. Roosters crowed. Horses pushed their velvety noses into fresh hay.