Valley of the Moon

by Melanie Gideon

  In my dream he moaned, “God.”

  In my dream I moaned “God” back to him.

  That was it. That was all. The bathing suit. The straps. My boobs. I was an innocent. Having a boy see my breasts was as far as my imagination would take me at that point. I’d been living off that fantasy for days now. It felt so real that when I passed Crawford Saltonstall in the hall at school, I had to look down at the ground, afraid that if he caught my eye he’d know everything.

  “How old do you think I am?” asked Dash.

  He was working, he had to be done with high school.

  “Nineteen?” I guessed.

  He nodded and took a few more drags of his cigarette. “Poor Gatsby. He never stood a chance.” He stubbed his butt out on the stoop. “I better get back to it. If your father catches me talking with you—well, I’m sure he won’t be too happy about it.”

  —

  That night, long after my mother and father were in bed, I sneaked downstairs and retrieved Dash’s cigarette butt from the stoop. I put it between my lips, imagining it had just come from his lips. I should have asked him for a drag—that would have been the cool thing to do.

  —

  “This is my daughter, Lux,” said my father as I walked into the yard the next afternoon.

  He and Dash stood at the truck. I’d heard my father laughing from a block away. He had his foot up on the bumper of the truck, like he was some handyman about to strap on his tool belt and get to work cleaning our gutters. His shiny oxford, thin black sock, and slice of hairy white leg embarrassed me.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Dash. He was acting as if we’d never met. As if we had something to hide.

  “You as well,” I said, wincing at my ridiculous formality.

  Dash fought off a smile.

  —

  And so a new routine began. Every day I’d run home after school. When I was a few blocks away, I’d let my hair out of its ponytail, dab on a little lipstick, pull out Gatsby, and saunter slowly up the street, pretending to read.

  “Afternoon,” Dash would say when I walked into the yard.

  I’d nod and go into the house. If my mother wasn’t home, he’d come into the kitchen through the back door. He didn’t knock anymore. He didn’t ask permission to use the bathroom; if he needed it, he went. Most days he’d go to the cupboard, get a glass, and help himself to whatever was in the refrigerator. I’d have my books and notebooks spread out on the table, my skirt shucked high on my thighs.

  “What?” I’d say.

  “Shhh,” he’d say.

  Then he’d lean against the counter and watch me pretend-studying. He’d stay for five, maybe ten minutes, neither of us speaking, and then he’d rinse his glass in the sink and leave. I knew this was some sort of test. Would I say anything to my father? Could I endure his stares?

  —

  One afternoon the pattern changed. He didn’t come into the kitchen. Instead he called me outside into the backyard. “I need your help.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you afraid of heights?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Climb up on the ladder. Just a few rungs.”

  I hesitated.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll hold it.” He grasped the ladder and shook it. “Perfectly safe.”

  “I’m not scared,” I said.

  “I know you’re not.”

  So, this was the moment. I’d passed the test.

  It was a windy day. I held my skirt tight to my legs while I climbed the first and second rung.

  “Let go of it,” he said.

  I looked down at him. His voice sounded different, deeper. I let go of my skirt and the wind burrowed beneath it. The pleats poofed out.

  “Another rung,” he said.

  I climbed.

  “Stop.”

  I stopped, staring straight ahead at the freshly painted clapboards. His gaze swam up my ankles and calves; pooled at the backs of my thighs.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to come down?”

  “Do you want me to come down?”

  “Not yet.”

  I could see the clock through the kitchen window: 4:05. My mother wouldn’t be home for at least another hour.

  He put his hand on my ankle. His palm was hot and dry. The breeze carried the scent of paint and bleached rags. I held my breath as he slowly slid his hand up the inside of my leg. When he reached my mid-thigh, I clamped my legs shut because I was embarrassed. I didn’t know why, but my underwear was wet. It wasn’t pee, but something moist seeped out of me involuntarily. I couldn’t stop it. Nor could I stop his insistent fingers. They parted my legs and spidered up to my underwear. When he touched the material, he made an involuntary sound. A sound I’d never heard a man make before. I was the cause of that—I drew that sound out of him.

  I’d never felt so powerful.

  I don’t know how long we stayed like that. His fingers lightly brushing the cotton crotch of my panties. Like a paintbrush. Back and forth. Back and forth. He kept returning to one particular spot and pressing on it. That spot was the nucleus. A wavy, thick feeling began there and radiated out.

  There was this reality: his hand was up my skirt. And there was this reality: we were both pretending it wasn’t.

  “You’d better go,” he finally said.

  —

  The next week he ignored me. He didn’t greet me when I walked up the path. There was no knock on the kitchen door, no bathroom requests, nothing. He stood on his ladder and played his paint-splattered transistor radio so loudly I had to shut the kitchen window in order to concentrate on my homework. He treated me like a stranger.

  I couldn’t sleep. I could barely eat. What had happened? Did a neighbor see us on the ladder? Had my down there disgusted him?

  Finally, in desperation I slipped a note under his windshield.

  Did I do something wrong?

  A schoolgirl’s note. I might as well have written, Do you like me? Circle “yes” or “no.” Then I sat in the kitchen and waited like Gatsby’s beautiful little fool, stricken, unable to do anything.

  He came through the front door this time. I froze as I heard his footsteps in the corridor.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it,” I blurted out.

  “Help what?”

  “My panties—getting wet. I know it’s gross. I think there must be something wrong with me.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “What? Jesus, Lux. You think that’s the issue? Damn. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  “There isn’t?”

  “No. You being wet is a good thing. The fact that you don’t know that is the problem.”

  “I don’t understand!” I cried.

  “That’s because you’re a baby. You’re still in high school.”

  “I’m not a baby.”

  “Your father wouldn’t agree with that.”

  The hair on his forearms was bleached white by the sun.

  “This isn’t about my father. It’s about what I want. What you want.”

  “How do you know what I want?”

  I remembered the sound he’d made when he touched me on the ladder. “I know what you want,” I whispered.

  —

  My whole family fell in love with Dash Karras. Who wouldn’t? Ridge-bellied and sun-kissed. Silver-tongued and punctual. A professional. He cleaned up after himself. When he left in the late afternoon, there’d be no sign he’d been there during the day. The ladder would be folded neatly, stored inside the woodshed. Not one drop of paint on the lawn.

  He did leave things behind, however. Bruises of lust visible only to me.

  “Are you feeling all right?” asked my mother.

  I helped myself to another bowl of cereal. I was starving.

  “Your cheeks are red. Do you have a fever?” She touched my forehead with the back of her hand.

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “Sunburn? You’ve been a
t the beach?”

  I picked up the bowl, draining it of milk. I was glowing because I’d been claimed. Every movement I made belonged to Dash. Tipping my head back. The sweet, cold liquid pouring down my throat. My grades were suffering. I’d quit the track team—it just seemed so silly. All I could think of was him.

  “I hate it when you do that,” said my mother. “Use a spoon.”

  My father walked into the room with the Times. “Ali KO’d Liston in the first round.” He tried to hand the paper to my mother.

  “Not at breakfast,” said my mother.

  I caught a glimpse of the photo, a shocking image. A snarling Muhammad Ali, arms the size of thighs, standing menacingly over a sprawled-out Sonny Liston.

  “Two minutes, twelve seconds. People hadn’t even found their seats and the fight was over,” he said.

  “We need to pay Dash. It’s his last day,” said my mother. “Should I write him a check or do you want me to give him cash?”

  “Write him a check. I don’t have time to go to the bank today.”

  “He did a great job,” said my mother. “It was nice having him around. I’ll miss our midmorning coffee breaks.”

  Dash had midmorning coffee breaks with my mother?

  My father popped a piece of bread into the toaster. “I’ve recommended him to the headmaster. This fall all the buildings at St. Paul’s are being repainted. I can’t guarantee he’ll get the job, but at least he and his father can bid on it. They should hire somebody local, a Newporter. The Karrases have been here for three generations.”

  “How do you know that?” asked my mother.

  “I asked him.”

  “Dash?” I said.

  “Of course, Dash. We’ve had quite a few conversations. He’s a fine young man. I encouraged him to think about college. I’m sure he could get into URI or PC.”

  “What if he just wants to be a painter?” I asked.

  “Nobody just wants to be a painter, Lux. He’s twenty. It’s time for him to get serious about his life.”

  —

  I skipped school that day. I sat on a bench near Trinity Church and waited for my mother’s Plymouth to drive by, then I went back home. Dash was already there, sitting on the back stoop.

  I walked across the grass and sat in his lap, straddling him. “You lied to me.”

  “About what?”

  “You’re twenty.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My father.”

  “The dean. That guy asks a lot of questions.”

  “That’s because he likes you. God, you’re five years older than me!” I’d captured the attention of a man half a decade older. I was too young to realize this was a cliché.

  “Two years,” he said.

  Time for me to confess. “Actually five. I’m fifteen.”

  His mouth dropped open. “You told me you were seventeen. You lied to me?”

  “What’s the difference? Fifteen? Seventeen?”

  “I thought you were going on eighteen. There’s a big difference.” He pushed me off his lap. “We have to stop this. We have to stop.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying that.”

  “I’m sorry, Lux, but I have a life. I have work. I can’t afford…I mean, you’re fucking fifteen!”

  I stared at him, my pulse raggedy and thin. “But—I love you.”

  “Christ,” he said.

  I started crying.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t cry. Aw, damn. Come here.”

  After a while I let him take me in his arms. He held me until my shuddering stopped.

  “Look, this is my last day. I start a new job in Middletown on Monday. What did you think would happen? How would we see each other?”

  What did I think would happen? I thought I’d drop out of school. I thought I’d move in with him. I thought I’d make dinner for him every night and I’d bleach his white painter pants and I’d grow dahlias in the backyard. I was fifteen. That’s what I thought.

  “When’s your mother coming home?”

  “You had coffee breaks with her every day?”

  He laughed. “What was I supposed to do? She gave me Fig Newtons. She’s a nice lady.”

  “She won’t be back until supper.”

  “The dean?”

  “Same.”

  —

  And so we played house.

  I made him eggs and toast. I sat at the table and watched him eat. The radio played songs it seemed were curated just for that moment. After breakfast we went to my bedroom. He undressed me. He took in each part of my body as if he’d never see it again, naming it as he touched it. Clavicle. Rib cage. Pelvis.

  Sound abandoned the room.

  The bedsprings groaning. Dash panting. The slap of our bodies separating and coming together. Somebody walking up the stairs. I heard none of it. I was gone.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw my father framed in the doorway. His face was ashen. He stared at us, trying to make sense of what he was encountering.

  “Dad!” I cried out, but it was too late.

  He roared and flew at Dash, ripping him off me. Dash was no match for my father, who boxed three nights a week. In a matter of seconds, Dash’s face was bloodied, an egg-size lump on his left cheekbone.

  Dash scrambled around trying to find his jeans and shirt.

  “Did he hurt you? Did he hurt you?” my father yelled. Before I could answer, he went at Dash again, a flurry of punches to the chest and abdomen.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Stop, stop, stop!” I begged. When I opened my eyes, Dash was gone.

  —

  “Are you all right?” my father asked.

  I drew the comforter over my head and hid. I’d swum out too far. I was caught in a rip tide. Being pulled out to sea.

  “Honey. You have to talk to me.” He started pacing. “Damn it. I’m phoning your mother.”

  His “honey” made tears come to my eyes. After last summer, we’d grown even further apart. He’d been perfectly cordial to me at school, but at home it was different. We stayed in our separate corners now. I didn’t watch Jackie Gleason with him anymore. He didn’t bring me books from the library, and on Saturday mornings he didn’t invite me to walk to the doughnut store, our ritual for as long as I could remember.

  Once I’d overheard my mother asking him why I wasn’t going with him.

  “Oh, she’s not interested,” he’d said.

  “She told you that?” asked my mother.

  “Yes.”

  “She said that. She didn’t want to go get doughnuts with you?”

  “She’s got better things to do, apparently,” he’d said.

  “No, please don’t call Mom,” I said. “Please don’t.”

  “Lux, you’re going to have to talk to one of us. We need to get our facts straight before we go to the police.”

  “The police! Why are we going to the police?”

  “Don’t be scared. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re a victim here. It’s not your fault.”

  And just like that he offered me a way back to my old life. To him. To the way we used to be. All I had to do was lie. I thought about it for a split second. Dash didn’t love me, that was clear. Maybe he had used me. Maybe he had taken advantage of me. He’d lied about his age. But I’d lied about mine, too.

  I couldn’t do it. “I’m not a victim.”

  “What do you mean? I saw him on top of you. I saw him!”

  I looked into my father’s wild eyes, knowing I was about to break his heart. “I wanted it. I wanted him.”

  He backed out of the room. A minute later, I heard the sound of his car driving away.

  —

  “Does Dad have an event tonight?” I asked. It was nearly eight and my father hadn’t come home yet.

  My mother cut a tomato into neat slices and spread them across the plate. “He went to McGillicutty’s. He should be back anytime.”

  I felt sick with dread. The plate I was holding slipped through
my fingers and crashed to the floor.

  “Don’t move,” my mother said.

  She got on her hands and knees and started picking up pieces of the shattered plate. The sight of her hunched-over back made me want to weep. Suddenly the door opened and my father walked into the kitchen carrying his briefcase in one hand, his gym bag in the other. He was freshly showered, his hair wet. He glanced at my mother.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “I dropped a plate,” said my mother, standing. “Stupid. It just slipped right out of my fingers.”

  I wasn’t sure why she was covering for me. Instinct, I guess.

  He put his bags on the floor. His right hand was bandaged with gauze and tape.

  “What happened to your hand?” asked my mother.

  “Bruised it.”

  “How?”

  “Sparring.”

  “You weren’t wearing your gloves?”

  No, he wasn’t wearing his gloves when he laid into Dash, punching him over and over again.

  “Of course I was wearing my gloves. Sometimes gloves aren’t enough.”

  “Let me see it. I’ll wrap it again, better. You should probably ice it, too.”

  “I’m fine, Miriam,” he growled. He got a tumbler out of the cupboard.

  “Daddy,” I said, desperate. “Can I make you a drink?”

  “Vodka tonic.” He held out the glass like I was some waitress.

  I made him the drink and my father took his vodka tonic into the living room.

  Karras & Sons did not get the St. Paul’s contract. In fact, I never saw Dash again.

  —

  For a while I tried to make my way back into my father’s good graces. I joined him on the couch after dinner to watch the evening news. I asked him to help me with my trigonometry. I bought him a new pair of boxing gloves for his birthday. He acknowledged my presence, solved the equations, and thanked me for the gift, but continued to keep his distance. I felt ashamed for a long time, and then my shame slowly turned to defiance.

  My last two years of high school, I lost all interest in academics. My class rank went from being in the top ten percent to somewhere around the fiftieth. I quit my clubs: French Club, Key Club, and Drama. I smoked openly in the courtyard. I flirted with any boy who would flirt back with me, and I slept with several of them. In the tennis shed. In the pool house. Once in the men’s locker room. Promiscuity was an escape, a route out, a way to take my power back. I read Simone de Beauvoir, I inhaled The Feminine Mystique. There was something, somebody that lived in the country between victim and whore. I was awakening to this.