Valley of the Moon

by Melanie Gideon

I could smell the pancakes from a hundred feet away. My stomach grumbled.

  “Everybody’s looking at us,” said Fancy. “At you.”

  They were looking at me but something had changed since last night. Their faces seemed more open, less guarded.

  “It’s odd, isn’t it?” said Fancy. “How quickly something unbelievable becomes believable.”

  I was thinking the very same thing. Yesterday I’d spent the day riding waves of surreality and shock. Thinking This can’t be happening. Today, just twenty-four hours later, those waves were still coming in but the time between sets was much longer. This was happening. I was here. I saw the same acknowledgment on people’s faces.

  “What crew are you on?” I asked Fancy.

  “Much to my brother’s dismay, I’m a flutterbudget. I just can’t seem to settle on one thing. Where are you working today?”

  “The garden.”

  “Oh,” she groaned. “Poor girl.”

  “I chose it.”

  “Mmm, let’s see how you feel about it tonight, shall we? When that lovely complexion is the color of a beet and your clothes—my clothes—are soaked through with sweat.”

  “You should come with me,” I said.

  “How I wish I could. I have just the perfect hat, with a lovely blue satin ribbon.” She looked at me sadly. “Alas, I’ve already committed myself to the entertainment crew.”

  “The entertainment crew. Joseph didn’t mention that.”

  “That’s because I’m starting it today. You’re welcome to join—I have all sorts of things planned. I thought our inaugural event would be an old-fashioned country dance. The Scottish reel, lots of lively skipping up and down in rows just like in Pride and Prejudice. Then a strings concert; as it happens, the beekeeper is a violinist and there are two cellists on the building crew. And perhaps a bimonthly lecture series. There is a great deal of untapped knowledge here at Greengage. And why, you, Lux! Oh my goodness, why haven’t I thought of you? You must be our first lecturer. You can fill us in on what we’ve missed. Tell us all about the twentieth century. Will you do it? Please say you’ll do it. Please?”

  “Fancy,” said Joseph. “She hasn’t even had her tea yet.” He’d suddenly materialized beside us.

  “Good heavens,” said Fancy. “Must you always be popping up like that? It’s so uncivilized, not to give a person some warning. And stop interfering. We’re the most bosom of friends already. Isn’t that right, Lux?”

  Nobody had ever referred to me as a bosom friend before. I felt tears come to my eyes, which was completely ridiculous, especially under the circumstances.

  “You are overwhelming her,” said Joseph, peering at me with concern.

  Twice now he’d seen me tear up. What was wrong with me? Why was I so emotional here?

  “I am not overwhelming her.”

  “She’s not. She’s not overwhelming me,” I said, although the idea of giving a talk to 278 people made me feel faint.

  Fancy squeezed my arm.

  “Come on, you two,” said Joseph, leading us into the dining hall. “Fancy, make sure you eat a proper breakfast. You have a long day ahead of you, installing the new privies.”

  Fancy snorted, “I will be doing no such thing.”

  —

  Martha was right. Being on the garden crew was backbreaking, repetitive work—but I loved it all the same. They started me in strawberries, me and all the kids; I guess they thought I couldn’t be trusted with proper vegetables yet. The children sat in the dirt, and for every strawberry they picked, another went into their mouths. None of them spoke to me for a while, although they did their share of staring, and then one little boy asked, “Don’t you like strawberries?” and that broke the dam of silence.

  “I love strawberries,” I said.

  “Then why aren’t you eating them?” asked a girl.

  “Because I’m not hungry.”

  “Why aren’t you hungry?”

  “Because I just ate breakfast.”

  “What did you have for breakfast?”

  “Pancakes, just like you.”

  “Do you have pancakes at your house?”

  “All the time.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “Yes, I have a son, just about your age, maybe a little younger. His name is Benno.”

  “What kind of a name is Benno?”

  “It’s short for Bennett.”

  “Why isn’t he with you?”

  “He’s on vacation.”

  “Vacation?”

  “A holiday. With his grandmother.”

  They looked horrified, their faces smudged with dirt, their fingers sticky with strawberry juice.

  “Then why are you here? Why didn’t you go with him?”

  Why, indeed? Suddenly I was hungry. I stuffed three strawberries in my mouth.

  After lunch I graduated to tomato picking. Nobody spoke to me for an hour. Finally a woman who looked to be in her fifties said, “You don’t have to be so gentle.”

  She was referring to the way I was handling the tomatoes. Tenderly placing them in the basket, being careful not to bruise them, which slowed my picking down quite a bit.

  “They’re just going in the pot,” she explained. “Those”—she pointed a few rows away—“we baby.”

  She walked over to the other row, picked a tomato, came back, and handed it to me. “Taste.”

  “I don’t have a knife.”

  “Just bite into it,” she instructed me.

  I bit into it like an apple; juice splattered on my chin. The skin was warm. It tasted of sun and earth and rain.

  “Now eat this,” she said, handing me one of the tomatoes I’d picked.

  Even though it was a deep red, it had none of the depth of flavor. It didn’t explode on my tongue, it just sort of sat there.

  “You see the difference? These are for canning. Those are for eating.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” She knelt down again. “My name is Ilsa.”

  “Hi, Ilsa, I’m Lux.”

  “I know. You don’t have to introduce yourself. Everybody knows who you are.”

  My basket was nearly full. I picked more tomatoes, quickly this time, and stood. The wagon was a good quarter mile away. I arched my back and stretched, preparing for the walk. The basket weighed at least twenty pounds.

  “Do you have moving pavements in San Francisco?” asked Ilsa.

  “Moving pavements?”

  “Sidewalks that carry you everywhere so you don’t have to walk,” she explained. “You just step on them and—whoosh!—off you go.”

  This was what people in the early twentieth century thought the future would bring? I guess it was similar to me wishing that one day there’d be a tiny record player I could carry around in my pocket so I could have music wherever I went.

  “Oh. God. No. That would be nice, though, wouldn’t it? There are so many hills in the city. But there is something close. Moving stairs. Escalators.”

  “What about personal flying machines?” asked a man who’d been eavesdropping on our conversation.

  “You mean like a car—an automobile that flies?”

  He nodded.

  “No, but we have commercial airlines. TWA. Pan Am. They fly hundreds of people in one airplane. You can travel from San Francisco to Boston in around five hours.”

  He cried out in surprise. From then on, the rest of the afternoon flew by. I was deluged with questions. People gasped at what they heard. They also laughed and made fun. How strange. Why would anybody need to blow-dry their hair? Or use an electrified toothbrush? Or sit in front of a small screen in their living room watching something called The Rockford Files?

  —

  At the end of the day, the garden crew climbed into the empty wagon. I didn’t know what time it was, but it had to be well after six; the sun was low in the sky and the air had a hint of coolness in it. Slowly we made our way back to the dining hall. My fingernails were edged with dirt, my ba
ck was tight and my calves sore from all the bending and lifting, but I felt a kind of grounded satisfaction that I hadn’t felt in years. A pleasant ache in my solar plexus. The steady thrum that only comes from working outside.

  We were packed into the wagon, sitting thigh to thigh. I now knew everybody’s name. Claudette, a six-year-old girl with a red birthmark on her neck in the shape of China, crawled into my lap, and in the ten minutes it took us to get to the dining hall, she fell asleep.

  “Do you mind?” asked Ilsa.

  “Not at all.” I enjoyed the weight of her head on my shoulder. It reminded me of my sweet Benno. I wondered what he was doing this very minute. How many days was it until I’d see him again? Eleven? Twelve?

  “Is she yours?” I asked.

  “She’s my granddaughter.”

  “Oh, your daughter is here, too?”

  Ilsa looked off into the distance. “She was.”

  Later I’d learn that Ilsa’s daughter had left Greengage the night before the earthquake to spend a few days with her cousins in Alameda. Would Claudette ever see her mother again? No matter how enchanting a place Greengage was, what had happened to them was ghastly.

  After dinner that night, when nobody was looking, I stepped into the fog. I was anxious to confirm that nothing had changed—that time was still passing regularly in my world. Once again, I heard the hum of the highway. And once again, I caught the briefest snippet of a song from a car radio. “The Hustle.” An image of Benno and me in the kitchen popped into my mind, the two of us doing the bump. The happiest of memories. He was fine. I was fine.

  I would ask Joseph if I could stay a few more days.

  —

  I woke at midnight. Unable to fall back asleep, I went out on the porch. Joseph was there. We’d barely spoken at dinner, although I’d caught him looking at me a few times.

  The red tip of his cigarette glowed in the dark.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” I said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Can I have a puff?” I asked.

  He handed the cigarette to me. I took a drag and tried to give it back to him. “Keep it,” he said. “How did it go today?”

  I didn’t realize until he asked me the question how I’d been longing for him to inquire about my day.

  “Good. I like the garden crew.”

  “Do you?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “You didn’t mind laboring in the heat for eight hours?”

  “I loved it.”

  “You loved it?”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I doubt you’re used to this kind of life.”

  What kind of life was he referring to? The kind of life where you spent the day outside, playing and working alongside people who knew you, really knew you?

  “When I was a kid, my father would take me to Lapis Lake in New Hampshire,” I said. “Greengage reminds me of there.”

  Joseph held his hand out for the cigarette.

  I gave it back to him, surprised that he didn’t mind sharing with me.

  “Were you happy at Lapis Lake?” he asked.

  “I was. For a long time.”

  “Until you weren’t.”

  Right.

  “When were you there last?”

  I had to think. “Nineteen sixty-four,” I said finally.

  “Absolutely not,” said my mother. “It would break your father’s heart. You’re going.” She handed me a jar of Pond’s. “By the way, just because you’ll be swimming every day doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cleanse your face properly every night.”

  I tucked the Pond’s into my suitcase. “I’m only talking about going up a couple of days late. This weekend is Meg’s birthday party. Her parents are renting out the entire rec center. We’ll have the pool all to ourselves. After that I can go join Dad at the lake.”

  I didn’t tell her the party was co-ed and that Meg had invited a bunch of sophomore boys.

  “I can take the bus to Portsmouth on Monday and Dad can meet me there.”

  “He needs your help opening up the cabin.”

  “He can open it himself.”

  My mother sighed.

  “Please. It’s only two days. Nobody will miss me.”

  “Everybody will miss you. The McKinleys. The Babbitts. They’ll be terribly disappointed if you don’t show up with your dad for Saturday night dinner. And what about that new family that bought the cabin next to the Hineses last year?”

  “The Harrises,” I said.

  “Yes, don’t they have a girl your age?”

  Beth Harris. We’d bonded last summer. We were as opposite from each other as could be, but our differences fell away at Lapis Lake.

  My mother folded a blouse. “You’ll have great fun once you get there, you always do.” She eyed my blue jean shorts. “You’re not wearing those today, are you?”

  My father and I were leaving for the lake tomorrow, but today the three of us were attending the New Parents’ Reception at St. Paul’s School.

  “It’s just a bunch of parents.”

  “A bunch of very excited parents who are thrilled and grateful their children will be attending St. Paul’s in September, thanks to your father.” She rifled through my closet and pulled out a blue dress with a white Peter Pan collar. “This will do nicely.”

  “No,” I groaned.

  “I’m sorry, darling, but you’re going to have to get used to dressing conservatively. If you think you’re under a spotlight now being the dean’s daughter, wait until you’re the headmaster’s daughter.”

  The headmaster of St. Paul’s was retiring and my father was the obvious choice to replace him; the board had been considering the appointment for months. He had the seniority and he was deeply committed to his job. He was popular as well. Kids adored him; they always hung out in his office. Grateful mothers sent him plates of cookies; grateful fathers, bottles of scotch at Christmas. He left the house at seven-thirty each morning and often didn’t return until seven o’clock at night. He loved his work.

  “Can I bring a book?” I asked.

  “That would be rude.”

  “If I sit in the very back?”

  “What book?”

  “House of Mirth,” I lied. I was in the middle of Updike’s Rabbit, Run and couldn’t wait to get back to it.

  “Fine,” she capitulated.

  —

  There were benefits to being my father’s daughter, and the moment we stepped onto campus they accrued to me. We were like celebrities. Parents called out their hellos. Many times, on our way to the chapel, people stopped us.

  “Is this your daughter?”

  “Yes, this is Lux,” said my father.

  “Oh, she’s just lovely,” they said. “A junior, senior?”

  My father looked appalled.

  My mother said, “Oh, no, Lux is just entering her freshman year.”

  I was breathless, thrilled they thought I was older than fourteen.

  —

  I didn’t end up reading Rabbit, Run at the New Parents’ Reception. My father, preaching the gospel of St. Paul’s School from the pulpit of the chapel, was too riveting. Like everybody else in the audience, I was swept away by the force of his charisma. I prayed for his eyes to fall on me, to choose me, to mark me as special. But foolishly I’d chosen to sit in the back row. It was impossible for him to pick me out in the sea of blue dresses.

  At least that’s what I told myself; I wasn’t ready to admit the truth—I was afraid my shine had worn off for him. Things had become awkward and forced between us over the past year. Most of my friends already had that distance with their fathers, it was built into their relationships; they’d always been much closer with their mothers. But in my house, it was the opposite. It was my father and I that were inseparable. His darling girl; that’s what he called me. He understood me—his bright, easily bored, passionate, underdog-defending, in-need-of-large-doses-of-physical-activity-and-changes-of
-scenery daughter. And more important than understanding me, he liked me. He was most proud when I took the road less traveled by.

  It wouldn’t be exaggerating to say I lived for the look of delight and surprise in his eyes when I accomplished something out of the ordinary. Beating him at chess. Reading the unabridged version of Anna Karenina when I was ten. Starting a campfire with nothing but a flint and a knife.

  But now it seemed our father and daughter skins were growing too small. I still craved his attention and approval, but he gave it more sparingly. Our long, rambling conversations about everything and anything—the speed of light, the Cuban missile crisis, how many minutes on each side to grill a perfect medium-rare steak—had petered out, replaced with the most quotidian of inquiries: Is Gunsmoke on tonight? Is it supposed to snow tomorrow? When’s the last time the grass was cut?

  It was mostly my fault. I’d created the distance. Or puberty had done it for me. Along with my new body (Breasts! Hair! Hips! Pimples!) came disorientation. What was charming behavior when I was a girl wasn’t always so charming at fourteen. Also, my adventurous nature didn’t set me apart anymore. The rest of my friends had finally caught up with me. Not only were they doing the daredevil things I’d always done, but they were doing those things on a grander, if more subversive, scale. They lied, they sneaked around, they hid their real lives away from their parents. They said they were going to the beach; instead they took the bus to Providence. They said they were sleeping over at a friend’s house; instead they spent the night on the beach with a boy. I was a good girl, I still asked permission to do practically everything, but for the first time in my life my father had started to question my judgment. He’d loved my precociousness when I was young. He’d let me roam free my entire life, in fact he’d encouraged it. Now, just when I was on the cusp of truly being able to handle the independence, he wanted to shut me in.

  More and more we stood on opposite shores, or, worse than that, he wasn’t on the shore at all. Instead it was my mother who’d taken his place, waving at me from across the sea that separated parent from child, imploring me to wash my face and moisturize every night.

  —

  “I’m going to miss you two,” my mother said the next morning, watching me zip up my suitcase.

  Jeans. Shorts. Shirts. Bathing suit. Underwear. Sneakers. What was I forgetting?