“We should have waited to tell her,” whispered Ginger.
Oh, right. This meant Rhonda would be moving out of our apartment.
“No,” said Rhonda. “She’s good. You’re good, aren’t you, Lux?”
My eyes were so full of tears I could barely see. I pulled over to the side of the road. Rhonda put her hand on my shoulder.
“She gets this way sometimes,” she said to Ginger. “Happy-sad. Just like Benno.”
I nodded. She was right. I felt like Benno. I could feel him right behind my eyes.
I thought about Lucy Pevensie and the first time she went through the wardrobe. Rubbing her cheek against the silk of the fur coats. The musty, mothball, old wood scent. And then suddenly, a blast of crisp, cold air. Snow. She’d slipped through a crack in our world right into another, just like I was about to do.
I forced myself to walk through the fog slowly. It was difficult to do so. Once the light appeared (now I knew it wasn’t a light—it was the morning sun flashing on the tin lantern that hung outside the dining hall door), everything inside of me screamed Run, run! Don’t think, don’t feel, just get there! But I wanted to gather clues. I was walking back in time. It was my duty to pay attention.
So what did my version of the wardrobe feel like? It felt like pressure. A million hands touching me at once. I pushed through time; time pushed through me.
My father and I lived in a fog like this. A deadly quiet, in-between place in which we were still stuck. I remembered a long-ago summer day he and I summited Mount Fort, the winds whipping around us at thirty miles an hour. To move forward required equal parts resistance and yielding. That’s what he taught me.
Being in the fog was disorienting. I walked for hours. I walked for minutes. I counted my steps. There were thousands of them. No, only a few dozen. And then I stepped into the meadow, knowing no more about the fog than I did before, but flooded with well-being at the sight of everybody sitting at the long tables eating breakfast. The air smelling of pine resin. The grass still damp with dew.
None of us acted surprised when Lux walked into the dining hall, but we were pleased. It was her third visit and we dared to hope this would be a regular occurrence. The morning after each full moon, she’d arrive. She’d be delivered to us like the newspaper, bringing news of the world, smelling of fresh ink and the outdoors.
“How long has it been?” she asked.
“It’s been a month,” I said.
“A month?” She looked confused.
“It’s always only a month for us, remember?”
“Oh, right. God. Sorry. It’s just…” She sighed. “It’s been eleven months for me.”
“Eleven months?” I asked. “Why did it take you so long to come back? Did something happen?”
She’d lost some weight. Her face was more angular; she had dark circles under her eyes. Had she been ill?
“No, no. Everything’s fine. I came every full moon, but the fog didn’t reappear for eleven months.”
“So—every full moon we have no way of knowing how much time will pass?” Martha said slowly. She glanced at me, trying to gauge my reaction.
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Lux.
The news was worse than before. I had begun to hope that every full moon the fog would reappear on Lux’s side, which meant to me our circumstances were changing; time was aligning inside and outside of the fog and soon we’d be set free. Now that I knew there was no way to predict how much time would go by every full moon, I’d have to let go of that fantasy.
“I’m sorry,” said Lux. “I know that’s not what you wanted to hear.”
The kitchen staff began talking in loud whispers.
I stood and addressed the room. “There is no need to panic. We have to be patient and collect more information. A pattern will eventually make itself clear.”
I didn’t dare look at Lux; she knew I was lying. I no more believed a pattern would emerge than I believed in trepanation as a cure for migraines.
“I know it’s difficult not to be distracted, given Lux’s arrival and this news, but we have a full day’s work ahead of us. Finish your breakfast and let’s gather our crews together,” I said.
“Will you be staying today?” I asked Lux.
“Yes, if it’s all right. It’s summer back home. July. I have some time off.”
July. It was October here.
“Where would you like to work?”
“Where am I needed?”
“Tubers,” shouted Eleanor. She didn’t like Lux, so I suspected she wanted Lux on her crew to have a little fun at her expense.
“Sweet potatoes,” I clarified. “That’s where I’ll be working today as well.”
—
We walked behind the wagon that ferried the crew to the fields. I felt protective: I didn’t want people bombarding Lux with questions, or worse, holding her responsible for our circumstances. Eleanor watched us with a scowl, biting down hard on her pipe.
“I brought her some tobacco,” said Lux. “I thought that might soften her up a bit.”
“She’s afraid you’re going to come between her and Fancy.”
“Me? What about Magnusson?”
“What about Magnusson?”
“They’re a couple.”
“They’re a couple?”
“Why do you keep repeating everything I say? This can’t be a surprise to you. I told you at the dance he liked her.”
I hadn’t seen them together once in the three weeks Lux had been gone.
“I knew it as soon as I saw them in the dining hall,” she said.
“They were sitting on opposite sides of the room.”
“Exactly. The current between them was electric. Impossible to miss.” She inhaled deeply. “God, the smell of this place. There’s nothing like it.”
I was immune to the smell of Greengage; I’d been here too long.
“Rich, wet soil. Compost. Dead leaves. Dried hay. Indian corn. Sweet and sad,” she said.
“Autumn.”
“Yes—autumn.”
“It rained yesterday.”
“Did it?”
We’d devolved into small talk. We seemed to have only two depths of conversation. Surface, or the unlit depths of the bottom.
“So it’s 1976.”
“Yep,” she said cautiously.
“You can tell me what’s happened.”
“It doesn’t make you feel like you’re missing out?”
I shook my head.
“Okay. Let me think. Um. Björn Borg just won Wimbledon.”
“Wimbledon? The Wimbledon Championships in London?”
“I don’t know, it’s somewhere in England. Grass courts.”
Yes, London. I’d actually attended the Wimbledon finals in 1881. It had been the beginning of William Renshaw’s reign. He’d won six years in a row.
“You’re smiling. That makes you happy?”
It did please me, that something remained of my old life. “The Wimbledon Championships have been going on since the nineteenth century.”
“See?” she said. “Some things are exactly the same.”
Some things. She went on to tell me that a company called Apple had manufactured the first personal computer, a two-dollar bill had been issued, and the United States had just celebrated their bicentennial on the Fourth of July—two hundred years of independence.
“Benno was in Newport for the celebration. All the tall ships came in. He was so excited to go.”
“He’s still there?”
“For another ten days.”
“You didn’t want to accompany him?”
“No,” she said. “It’s really more of a kid’s thing.” I could tell by her flushed cheeks she wasn’t telling me everything. Perhaps she hadn’t been invited.
“Besides, it’s a good thing I didn’t go—I’d have missed the fog. Who knows how long it will be before it comes back again?”
I did not want to dive down to the bottom again, wh
ere we talked plainly about unspeakable things.
“Do you have any experience picking sweet potatoes?” I asked.
—
I showed her how to find the crown of the vine and then, with a digging fork, carefully loosen the soil around the plant.
“Now get your fingers in there and pull,” I said. “Firmly but gently.”
She tugged with a soft grunt and unearthed a sweet potato. Her eyes were the exact blue-green color of the Pacific Ocean. It occurred to me I’d never see the ocean again.
She rubbed dirt off the sweet potato. “Do you wash them after you pick them?”
“They have to cure first. We’ll take them to the barn this afternoon and lay them out on tarps.”
She moved on to the next plant.
“Hold on. You’re not done with this one. Each vine yields five or six tubers.”
She thrust her fingers into the soil gleefully. “It’s like searching for buried treasure.”
Lux had such a captivating, childlike sense of wonder. A capacious imagination. When I was with her, everything felt a little sharper, a little brighter. She cajoled me into a better mood. No, cajoled was too understated a word. She whirled me into a positive emotional state—I seemed to have no choice in the matter. I was not a religious man: although I’d been raised in the Anglican Church, I didn’t believe in God or angels or fate. But something about Lux being in Greengage felt divinely mandated.
“Have you given any more thought to me bringing somebody else back?” she asked, a while later. “Somebody who might be able to—figure this out?”
I’d just begun to trust her. The idea of adding another stranger into the mix was overwhelming. Never mind the risk to her safety. She seemed to barely be making it. What if she told the wrong sort of person and they reported her to the authorities or worse?
“Do you really think there’s somebody out there who will be able to explain what’s happened to us? Who’d be able to fix this? Alter our situation?” I asked.
She rubbed her dusty palms on her skirt and shook her head slowly. “No. No, I guess I don’t.”
“It’s too risky for you—and for us.”
As much as I sincerely doubted any scientist or other expert could help us, there was more to it than that. It was 1976 out there. If we ever found a way through the fog, how in God’s name would we make our way in such a new world? And would we even want to? Perhaps we were better off staying right here.
—
Just before lunch she groaned with happiness. “It’s just so satisfying to see the baskets filling. Abundance. There’s nothing in my life like that. I feel like I’m constantly racing to catch up, and the weird thing is I have no idea what I’m racing toward. I’m beginning to doubt there’s a finish line.”
Eleanor approached. She’d been waiting for her opportunity. I hadn’t given her one: I’d stayed by Lux’s side all morning.
“Here comes Eleanor,” I warned Lux.
Eleanor was a big woman, nearly six feet tall. She wore her hair in a long braid; her face was hidden under the brim of her leather hat. She strode down the rows like a cowboy, dirt spitting up from her heels.
“Break time already?” she said, her hands on her hips.
“We’ve been working since seven, Dear One. It’s nearly noon now. Yes, I would say it’s break time.”
My addressing her as Dear One in public was a call to arms—only Fancy was allowed to use that nickname. I braced myself for the return of fire.
“I have something for you,” said Lux.
“What could you possibly have for me?” said Eleanor.
Lux opened her pack and pulled out a pouch of tobacco. “Captain Black,” she said. “Cherry.”
Eleanor pulled a face but I could see how startled she was at Lux’s offering. I’d known her since she was born. Beneath her brittle exterior she was desperate for connection.
“Isn’t that kind of Lux?” I said. “To think of you.”
Eleanor opened the package and sniffed. “It smells like a lollipop,” she scoffed, but slid the tobacco grudgingly into her pocket.
“There are other flavors. If you don’t like it, let me know and next time I’ll bring you something else,” said Lux.
I winced at her eagerness: Eleanor would devour her if she wasn’t careful.
“So,” said Eleanor. “Tell me, Lux, are you the kind of person who believes the future moves toward them? Or are you the kind of person who believes they move toward the future?”
Lux’s brow furrowed—she had no idea how to answer that question. Eleanor sneered and turned her attention to me.
“Our Joseph was in the latter camp. He believed he was in charge. He thought he was the current; now, thanks to you, he’s realized he’s just a twig in the stream of time. It must come as a tremendous shock. Poor Joseph.”
For once I was speechless.
“Jesus, there’s no need to be so mean,” said Lux. “I know your circumstances are incredibly hard. But why attack Joseph? We’re all in this together.”
She had a smudge of dirt on her cheek that I longed to wipe away: it undermined her authority. She was standing up for me. A useless exercise (I knew Eleanor would never back down) but endearing all the same.
“You’re mistaken. We are not all in this together. You are not in this with us,” spat Eleanor.
I often forgot that both Eleanor and Fancy hadn’t been permanent residents of Greengage; they’d had the bad luck to be visiting when we’d been trapped by the fog. How this fact must haunt them both.
Even though I could see words of protest forming on Lux’s lips, she held them back.
“I’m sorry,” said Lux.
Eleanor gave her a look of disgust and stalked off.
A week after my mother died, Eleanor (who’d been Fancy’s closest companion, who’d been raised as if she were one of us) was moved out of my sister’s bedroom and into the maids’ quarters. It took Fancy the better part of the month to stop crying herself to sleep. It took Eleanor the better part of the month to stop calling my sister Fancy and refer to her as Miss instead. They’d been making their way back to each other ever since.
“Eleanor’s lonely,” I said.
“That’s no excuse,” said Lux. “We’re all lonely.”
She fell to her knees and tugged on a vine.
That night, around 11:00 P.M., I went downstairs in search of Joseph. I wanted to be back in bed by midnight so I’d be in good shape for the morning. He was on the porch as usual. Perched on the railing.
“Do you want to talk about how long it took me to get back?” I asked.
He swiveled around to face me, ignoring my question. “What have you got there?”
I handed him the Robert Frost book. “The book I told you about. Poetry. I think you’ll like it.”
“New Hampshire. Your New Hampshire?”
“No, it’s not my New Hampshire—it’s Frost’s. The title is just a coincidence. There’s some good stuff in there.”
“When do you have to return it to the library?”
He forgot nothing.
“I don’t. It was an old copy, they were giving it away. It’s yours to keep.”
I was glad it was dark. He couldn’t see my guilty face.
“I have a confession to make,” I said. “I didn’t tell you the truth about something.”
“Oh?” he said carefully.
“I’m not a widow.”
He didn’t respond and for a split second I regretted my decision to tell him about Nelson. He was from a different era, and even though he was progressive, hearing I’d had a child out of wedlock would likely be shocking for him. It might well change his opinion of me, but I had to tell him the truth. I wanted this man to know the real me, not a prettified me.
“Benno’s father was in the army. He died in the war. I didn’t lie about that. It’s just that I’m not technically a widow, because, well, because we weren’t married. I found out I was pregnant after he ship
ped out. His name was Nelson King. I liked him. A lot. Maybe I would have grown to love him. Maybe we would have gotten married if he hadn’t been killed. I lied to you because I was ashamed. Being an unwed, single mother in my time still carries a stigma. You’d think it would be different, but it’s not.”
He studied me silently.
“Say something,” I pleaded, feeling utterly vulnerable.
His face was unreadable. “This widow story. Do you tell this to other people?”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“And they feel sorry for you.”
“I guess.”
“And you like that?”
“I don’t like it, but it’s better than the alternative.”
“Your parents? Do they know the truth?”
“Of course they do.”
“How do they feel about it?”
“My mother is fine. She was fine right from the beginning.”
“And your father?”
“He barely acknowledged Benno’s existence,” I admitted.
“But he’s come around now?”
“Sort of. But it’s too late, the damage is done. I don’t trust him.”
“Yet you sent Benno off to Newport again.”
“He wanted to go,” I snapped.
“But you didn’t want him to go.”
“I wanted him not to want to go.”
“But he did.”
I gave an exasperated sigh. “I’m going to bed.”
“You’re angry with me.”
“No. Yes. Damn it, I never should have told you.”
“You think I’m judging you.”
“Aren’t you?”
Joseph slid down off the rail. “I am in no position to judge, Lux,” he said quietly.
—
October in Greengage. The nights were cold and the days were warm, the fields high with corn. The tomato vines had withered away, but the valley floor was a sea of fall greens: turnips, mustard, and something called bok choy. Behind the barn were acres of garlic, winter squash, and pumpkins.
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