Valley of the Moon

by Melanie Gideon

  “I’d prefer some time to myself,” he said.

  My throat tightened. “Okay,” I said in a small voice, the realization that he didn’t want to be with me fully sinking in. But I didn’t want to be with him either, not really.

  Two days ago we’d spent the night camping on Mount Fort. We cooked our dinner over the campfire, made a shelter out of pine boughs, and slept in a tent. I found it incredibly tedious. He was so regimented about it all. Everything had to be done in a certain way. I’d made the mistake of forgetting to do one last cleanup around the campsite to make sure we hadn’t left anything behind. He held up a Jolly Rancher candy wrapper. My mother had sneaked a few into my Dopp kit.

  “Is this yours?”

  “No.”

  He shook his head gravely at me and tucked the wrapper into his pocket. “Travel lightly and leave no trace.”

  That was his mantra. He’d been telling me that since the day I was born.

  “I didn’t leave any trace. I told you, it isn’t mine.”

  He didn’t believe me.

  —

  My father was gone the entire afternoon. Without him there, the cabin felt weightless, like it was floating in the trees. I pretended to be sick that night so I didn’t have to go to supper. I opened a sleeve of saltines and sat on the porch listening to the rattle of silverware, the rising and falling of voices coming from the clubhouse.

  The sounds of the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” carried over the water. It must be dessert time; the kids always cranked up the music after dinner. I felt like Beth must have felt when she walked into the water, every eye watching her, judging her. Why was it that everything I did these days seemed to go wrong?

  I could fix this. All I had to do was go to the dining hall and say I was feeling better. Sit down at the kids’ table next to Beth, strike up a conversation, and invite her over to the cabin after dinner for s’mores. And that night, when my father picked up his copy of Gatsby, I would tell him I was sorry. I didn’t know why I couldn’t find myself here, or why I felt so lost.

  But I couldn’t get my legs to stand up. Time slowed down. The minutes were hours long. Darkness began to fall; the first stars appeared. Finally I saw my father winding his way home through the trees.

  “I thought you’d be in bed,” he said, and my words dried up in my mouth.

  —

  The following morning I asked, “Could we go out for supper tonight? I’m stir-crazy.”

  I couldn’t hide my restlessness anymore. I’d come to the conclusion that I’d outgrown the lake. It was like I’d rounded a point on some invisible coast, and now that I’d come around the headland, I knew the truth. These people, this world, was too small for me.

  “When we drove in, I saw a new hamburger place in town. The Rathskeller.”

  “That wasn’t a restaurant, it was a bar,” said my father.

  “A bar that serves hamburgers.”

  I poured myself some water and mixed in a spoonful of Tang.

  “Aren’t you tired of hot dogs? Please,” I begged.

  “All right,” he said after a while.

  —

  I spent all afternoon getting ready. When I walked into the living room wearing a sundress with kitten heels, he visibly startled.

  I’d transformed myself. My hair, bleached light brown from the sun, spilled down my back. My shoulders were tanned, the color of walnuts. I’d cinched the waist of my dress with a thick black belt and put on Jean Naté body splash.

  I wanted him to be shocked at my metamorphosis. I wanted him to compliment me.

  Instead he grabbed his keys off the counter and said, “Let’s go.”

  —

  People stared at me when we walked in. I wasn’t imagining it.

  “Your daughter,” said the waitress. “What beautiful eyes. They’re the exact color of the lake. She must drive the boys crazy.”

  “Mmm,” said my father. “Can you bring me a whiskey?”

  “Sure. What about you, hon? A Coke?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “No Coke—she’ll have a glass of milk with her burger.”

  I glared at my father. “Yes, I’ll have a glass of milk with my burger. Because I’m five.”

  “All righty,” said the waitress, taken aback by the tone of my voice.

  “For Chrissakes,” said my father when she was out of earshot. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He got up and headed toward the bathroom.

  I waited till he was out of sight, then bolted up. “I’ll get his whiskey,” I said to the waitress, who passed me looking stressed, her tray piled high with plates of food.

  “Thanks a bunch, hon.” She called out to the bartender, “She needs a whiskey neat for her dad.”

  I sat down at the bar. The bartender wore a UNH sweatshirt. He poured the drink. Impulsively and without thinking, I grabbed the glass and drank it down, the liquid burning my throat. I tried not to grimace.

  He poured me another, a smile playing on his lips.

  “I go to UNH, too,” I said. “What year are you?”

  “Junior, you?”

  “I’m a freshman—well, about to be a sophomore.”

  “Do you live in Alexander Hall? Mills?”

  “Mills.”

  “Better finish that off before your father comes back.”

  I looked at the drink: I was having second thoughts. “I can’t. It’s disgusting.”

  He laughed, filled a mug with Coke and poured a shot of rum into it. “I think you’ll like this a little better.”

  I took the Coke and the glass of whiskey back to the table. My father joined me a minute later and noticed my soda.

  “I thought I told you to get milk.”

  I could already feel the effects of the whiskey. My limbs felt loose. My face hot.

  “The waitress brought it. I think she must have gotten my order confused.”

  He flashed me a skeptical look, picked up the glass of Coke and sniffed it. His eyes darkened and he took a sip. Carefully he set the glass back down on the table and wiped his mouth with his napkin.

  “I didn’t order it, Dad. I swear. The waitress just brought it.”

  “Did you have a sip?”

  “No!” I cried.

  He glared at me.

  “Okay, yes, but then I realized there was liquor in it and—”

  “What kind of an idiot do you take me for?” he hissed.

  He got out his wallet, threw a ten-dollar bill on the table, slid out of the booth, and walked away, leaving me sitting there.

  The bartender, who’d been listening to the entire conversation, raised his eyebrows at me. “Better get going,” he said. “You’re gonna miss your ride.”

  —

  I woke the next morning to the sound of my father whistling. The woodstove crackled, the coffee brewed. I could tell by the sound of his footsteps he was in a good mood.

  “Get up, lazybones. I’m making your favorite, blueberry pancakes. The blueberries freshly picked by yours truly.”

  I didn’t answer him. I pulled the covers over my head. He came into the room a few minutes later.

  He’d given me the silent treatment all last night. Now he wanted to be nice?

  “Lux. Time to get up.”

  “I don’t feel good.”

  He felt my forehead. His skin smelled like the lake. His brow creased. “Lux, I’m sorry, I over—”

  I cut him off. “Cramps,” I said.

  “Oh. Okay. Do you have what you need?”

  “Just leave me alone for a bit. They’ll pass.”

  —

  He checked on me every hour, a look of increasing concern on his face. He brought me tea. Lemonade. A boiled egg. A deviled ham sandwich. He brought in Monopoly, a deck of cards, The Great Gatsby, but I refused to play or listen. Each time he opened and shut the door, he shrank a little, and I was glad of it. He’d gone too far. I’d misbehaved plenty of times. Done stupid things. He’d been disappointed with
me, but never ashamed. This was different. I’d felt scorn from him. Contempt. It had a completely different smell than disappointment. Like something scorched, an iron left a second too long on a blouse.

  —

  That night, after my father had gone to sleep, I sneaked out and went back to the Rathskeller.

  “You again,” said the bartender.

  I’d dressed more conservatively this time, not wanting to draw attention to myself. Jeans, flats (it was a mile walk from the cabin to the bar), and a gingham shirt, tied tight at my waist.

  “Me again.”

  “Where’s Daddy?”

  I shrugged.

  “Ever had a margarita?” he asked, already pouring the drink. He watched as I took a careful sip.

  “It tastes like limeade.”

  “Like it?”

  “Oh, yes,” I breathed.

  His eyes drifted to the TV mounted above the bar. “Damn Sox. Can’t get anything going this year.”

  I felt his attention waning. I gulped the rest of the drink.

  “Make me something else,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “A martini, dry, two olives.” That was my mother’s drink.

  “You shouldn’t mix liquors. A girl like you, weighs nothing, you’ll be drunk in no time.”

  “And that would be a bad thing?”

  He grinned. “That would be a very bad thing.”

  —

  Two hours later he drove me home. I was looped—I’d never had that much to drink before. My mind felt skittery, like marbles on a wooden floor.

  “Stop here.” I didn’t want him to pull in the driveway; I couldn’t chance waking my father up.

  I launched myself across the seat and tried to kiss him on the lips. He turned his head at the last minute and I ended up kissing him on his jaw.

  “Whoa,” he said, pushing me away. “I was just being nice. I’m not—interested in you. You’re a kid.”

  “Oh God,” I said, mortified.

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  “I told you, I’m a freshman.”

  “Not at UNH you’re not. Mills is not a freshman dorm.” He got out of the car, came around my side, and opened my door. “Go home,” he said, not unkindly.

  —

  In front of our cabin was a beautiful old maple tree. It provided shade on a sunny day and filled the house with its sweet leafy smell. A big bough extended out over the lake. You could walk across it like a dock.

  I did so now. Drunk, I navigated it carefully like a trapeze artist. Then I sat down and dangled my feet in the water.

  Go home.

  I pulled my Swiss Army knife out of my pocket. My father had given it to me for my tenth birthday. I flicked it open and carved LUX WAS HERE into the soft wood of the bough. It felt so good and right. Like I was restoring order to the night.

  The next morning, when I came out of the bedroom, my head pounding with my first ever hangover, my father handed me some sandpaper and pointed to the tree.

  “Erase your fucking name,” he said.

  —

  When we got home, my father told my mother the truth. The phone call he’d received the morning we’d left for the lake had not been Manny the gardener, but rather Herbert Jeffers, the president of the St. Paul’s board. Jeffers had broken the news to my father that he’d been passed over for the headmaster job. In the end they’d decided to go with somebody else, a legacy. A Princeton grad. A man whose family had attended St. Paul’s for the last fifty years.

  I wanted to go to him, hug him, say the right thing. It doesn’t matter, Dad. Who cares. Screw them. You’re a great dean. I could have done that. Before. But this was after. We’d cast each other off at Lapis Lake.

  We were worlds apart.

  “I’ve never been to New Hampshire,” I said to Lux.

  “You’re not missing much. Where are you from, anyway? I mean, where in England? Obviously you’re British.”

  “London.”

  “Where in London?”

  “Have you ever been there?”

  “No.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to tell her my life story. “It’s not a time I care to remember.”

  “Do you mind?” She gestured to the chair beside me.

  Where were my manners? “Please.”

  “I understand about the past,” she said, sliding into the chair. “I have plenty of things I don’t want to remember either.”

  I changed the subject. “What did you think of the garden crew?”

  “Oh, I liked them very much. Especially Ilsa.”

  Poor Ilsa, whose daughter, Brigette, had been in Alameda on the night of the earthquake.

  “It must be agony for her, wondering if Brigette kept trying to get back to Greengage,” said Lux.

  I’d wondered about this, too. How could Brigette not have returned? Lux showed us how easy it was to get here. All she had to do was walk through the fog. Why hadn’t Brigette done the same?

  “I have a theory,” said Lux. “I think she didn’t come back because there was no way for her to come back. Because the fog wasn’t there.”

  “It was there when you came.”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t there when I first arrived. Remember I told you it rolled in after midnight?”

  Actually I’d tried to forget that fact. It taxed my brain too much to contemplate it.

  “Okay, so add that information to what we already know. Time speeds up only on full moon days. And sixty-nine years have passed out there, even though only five full moons have happened here, so we can extrapolate that every full moon night, fourteen years pass, correct?”

  “It’s 13.8 years if you want to be precise,” I said.

  She frowned. “Fine—13.8 years. So maybe the reason Brigette never made it back to Greengage is because the way back—the fog—is only there on my side once every 13.8 years. Brigette would have had to have been in the exact right place at the exact right time to stumble upon the fog. And what are the odds of that? Minute. Practically nil. That would explain why nobody came to rescue you, too. They couldn’t find you. You weren’t there.”

  The news only got worse and worse. If Lux was right, it was pure happenstance that she’d found her way to us.

  “Well, there’s only one way to know for sure. I’ll come again on the next full moon,” she said brightly.

  “You won’t come again,” I said, unable to mask my despair. My voice sounded hollow.

  “Of course I will.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Well, if you are right about all this, then the next time you could come, you’ll be nearly forty.”

  She looked thunderstruck. Obviously she hadn’t worked it all out in her head.

  “God knows where you’ll be then. You could be living in Rhode Island.”

  I didn’t say, God knows if you’ll be able to come, even if you want to. Years from now her life could be very different. She could be sidetracked by love. Felled by illness. Young people had no idea how quickly things could change.

  “Doubtful,” she said. “Stop trying to chase me off. I’m coming back, no matter where I live or how elderly I am.”

  “Elderly. Forty is elderly?”

  “Sorry,” she smirked. “Is that how old you are?”

  “I am forty-two.”

  “Oh, just a few years younger than my mother.”

  Sometimes I felt elderly. Right now, sitting with this young woman, I felt like an old man.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me any questions, Joseph?”

  “About what?”

  “Life. The 1970s. What’s happened in the last sixty-nine years besides two world wars and a man walking on the moon. Aren’t you interested? Everybody else can’t stop asking questions.”

  In fact, I had a million questions but I’d been holding myself back. I wasn’t sure why—perhaps I didn’t want to reveal my desperation to know if the progress I’d hoped to se
e in the world had materialized. This young woman was the personification of all my hopes for humankind, for better or for worse.

  “I’m not everybody else,” I said.

  “Clearly,” she said.

  —

  The next day Lux worked with the kitchen crew. I caught glimpses of her at each meal, behind the counter, her head in a pot, stirring jam. This time of year our food preservation efforts were prodigious. We spent a week on jams, a week on canned vegetables, and a week on drying and smoking meats. The work was relentless and somewhat boring, but every time I saw Lux she had a smile on her face.

  —

  Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Give me a brief summary of domestic and world events,” I said that evening—our late night talks had become something of a ritual.

  I saw her triumphant expression in the candlelight. Finally I’d revealed my hunger for information.

  “What’s your definition of brief?”

  “Your highlights. You choose.”

  My mistake. I should have given her some parameters. She didn’t stop speaking for an hour.

  The Oreo cookie invented, the Titanic sinks, Spanish flu, Prohibition, women granted the right to vote, Lindbergh flies solo across the Atlantic, penicillin invented, stock market crashes, the Depression, Amelia Earhart, the atom is split, Prohibition ends, Golden Gate Bridge is built, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the Korean War, Disneyland, Rosa Parks, Laika the dog is shot into space, hula hoops, birth control pill invented, Bay of Pigs, Marilyn Monroe dies, JFK killed, MLK has a dream, Vietnam War, Star Trek, MLK killed, RFK killed, Woodstock, the Beatles (George, Ringo, John, and Paul) break up, Watergate, the Vietnam War ends, Nixon resigns, Earth Day, Fiddler on the Roof, Olga Korbut, Patty Hearst, Transcendental Meditation, the ERA, The Six Million Dollar Man.

  “Bloody hell,” I said when she was done.

  “I know. It must be a lot to take in.”

  “It’s unfathomable. A Brit named his son Ringo Starr?”

  She looked pleasantly surprised: she’d thought I had no sense of humor.