Valley of the Moon

by Melanie Gideon

“I think it’s better if we get our cones to go.” I’d already splurged on the ricotta for dinner. If we sat, I’d have to tip the waitress. And Benno wouldn’t settle for just sprinkles. He’d want his ice cream in a dish, with crushed pineapple and whipped cream. Then suddenly it was a sundae, twice the cost of a cone.

  “Please,” he begged. “Please?”

  “All right,” I said, giving in. We sat down on two stools.

  There were a few other customers in the café. Late afternoon—only one waitress on duty.

  The manager stood at the cash register reading a paper. He stared at us. I smiled; he did not smile back. He gestured to the waitress and whispered something in her ear.

  “French vanilla,” Benno announced. “Can I have it in a dish?”

  “Yes, you can have it in a dish.” I sighed, knowing exactly what was coming next.

  “Can I have pineapple and whipped cream?” He gave me such a sweet, imploring look my heart broke. How easy it was to make him happy.

  “And nuts and a cherry?” I asked.

  “A sundae?” His eyes opened wide in surprise. “I can have a sundae?”

  “If you want.”

  “That’s okay?”

  “Yes, sweetheart.”

  “What are you going to have?”

  “Mmm…” I pretended to think about it. “I think I’ll have a cup of tea.”

  “You don’t want ice cream?”

  “I’m going to save my appetite for dinner.”

  He nodded and spun around on the stool.

  The waitress came. She scribbled the order on her pad and handed me the bill.

  “That’s three dollars and twenty-six cents,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, putting the bill face-down on the counter.

  She stood there waiting.

  “Do you need something?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry. I need you to pay the bill,” she said, glancing over at the manager, who was watching us intently.

  “Now? But you haven’t even put in the order.”

  “Mom,” said Benno. He reached for my hand.

  “It’s our policy,” she said softly. “You have to pay before you get your food.”

  Suddenly I understood. This was their policy for people like us. Me and Benno. A white woman with a mixed-race child who looked as if they had no money, who looked as if they might run out on the bill.

  “Mama,” said Benno in a small voice. “It’s all right. Let’s go. I don’t want the sundae.”

  I sat there, my cheeks aflame, not knowing whether to bolt out of the café or make a scene. I decided to do neither. Willing my hands not to shake, I got my wallet out of my purse and, with as much dignity as I could muster, gave her a five-dollar bill.

  “I’ll get your change,” the waitress said.

  “Keep it,” I said, loud enough for the manager to hear.

  —

  Sometimes Benno and I were like an old married couple, kissing and bickering and shouting. Sometimes we were best friends, laughing and weaving into each other, slamming our cards down on the table, jamming cookies into our mouths. And sometimes, we were strangers, like that early evening when I put my key in the lock and we stepped back into the apartment. Everything felt foreign, like it didn’t belong to us anymore.

  “Should I get the lasagna started?”

  “I’m not hungry,” said Benno.

  I wasn’t either. “That’s all right. I’ll make it tomorrow night.”

  I drew him under my arm and gave him a hug.

  “Can I watch TV?”

  It was then that the longing for Greengage overtook me, so overwhelming I could only manage one word.

  “Yes.”

  —

  In the past two years, I’d been back only five times: the fog continued to be coy. It appeared one month, then didn’t appear for another four months. Then there was a two-month stretch, then it didn’t return for another year. It had been six months now and counting since I’d last seen my friends. Fancy and Magnusson had gotten married a while back. I’d given Martha seeds for her flower clock, and I continued to replenish Joseph’s cigarette stores.

  Knowing Greengage was there, out of my reach, beyond the fog, was unbearable.

  —

  “If you’re late one more time…,” said Mike Mulligan.

  I quickly tied my black apron. “Your watch is fast.”

  Benno had fallen off his Big Wheel and scraped his knee just as I was about to leave for work. He was nearly hysterical (he wasn’t good with the sight of blood) and wouldn’t let Mrs. Patel near him, so I had to bring him back upstairs myself, wash the wound, and convince him the Bactine wouldn’t sting (that alone took an additional ten minutes).

  “It’s not fast.”

  “I’m only fifteen minutes late.”

  “You’re twenty-five minutes late. Jimmy had to take three of your tables. Look at him. The imbecile.”

  Jimmy was practically running through the restaurant, a platter held high above his head, his face contorted with stress, his hair wet.

  “Is that sweat or hair product?”

  Mike sighed. “It better be hair product. Jesus, Lux. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation again. You’re my best goddamned waitress and that has saved your ass until now, but I am at the end of my bloody rope.”

  My last week’s sales had topped one thousand dollars. That was a Seven Hills record. I thought of reminding him of this fact, but he was past that point.

  “I’m sorry, Mike. I’ll do better, I promise.”

  He grunted.

  —

  “Love Boat’s on,” Benno shouted from the living room.

  Here was the wonderful thing about third-grade boys. In public they might want nothing to do with you, but in private they were snugglers. He patted the cushion of the couch.

  “Oh, Julie looks good in that jumpsuit,” I said, sitting beside him.

  Benno had a crush on The Love Boat’s cruise director, Julie McCoy. Her bowl cut had been much copied, even on the streets of San Francisco.

  “Want to know the title?” I asked, picking up the TV Guide. The Love Boat had two or three storylines in each episode, and I found the titles hilarious.

  “ ‘The Business of Love/Crash Diet Crisis/I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’!” I recited.

  Benno looked at me solemnly. He didn’t like me to make fun of his favorite show. He wore his Star Wars pajamas and an olive green cap from the army-navy store. I fought the urge to sweep him up into my arms and cover him with kisses.

  “Shush,” he admonished me.

  Benno was capable of doing only one thing at a time, but my God, that boy could focus. Whether he was watching TV or having a conversation, he listened with an eerie intensity. Leaning in. Never taking his eyes off yours. He dispensed his attention extravagantly and it always made me feel guilty. There was nobody I loved more than Benno, but at times there was nobody I wanted to get away from more. Not from him per se, but from the responsibility of him. I assumed it was this way for all mothers, the wild swings between claustrophobia and joy. Benno forced me to stay in the present. Sometimes I craved this intimacy. Sometimes it made me want to run away.

  The phone rang halfway through Love Boat. It was eight-thirty. It had to be my mother—she was the only one who called this late. I ran into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

  “Can’t sleep?” I asked.

  She had horrible bouts of sleeplessness. I’d asked Ginger what could be causing it. Was there something to be alarmed about? Even though Ginger was a bone man, I still relied on him for all my basic medical information.

  “How old is she?” he’d asked.

  “Fifty-three.”

  “Menopause,” he said. “Sleeplessness is a common symptom.”

  “Well, what can she do about it? She’s a walking zombie.”

  He shrugged sympathetically. “Does your father snore?”

  “Probably.”

 
“She could sleep on the couch.”

  “She’d never do that.”

  “Tell her to get a script from her doctor for diazepam. The insomnia will pass once she’s through the change.”

  “Did you get the pills?” I asked my mother.

  “Yes.”

  “And—”

  “And, they make me feel dead in the morning. Like I’ve been buried alive. I can’t even open my eyelids. I’d rather not sleep.”

  “Oh, Mom.”

  She brushed my concern away. “Listen, I have to ask you something. Your father got a letter from Benno.”

  I no longer supervised Benno’s missives to my father. I’d given him stamps, stationery, and envelopes, and he wrote to my father whenever he wanted, posted the letters in the mailbox himself. They had their own relationship outside of me.

  My mother hesitated. “We’re concerned. He seems a little sad. He says you have to go to work every night, almost as soon as he’s home from school, that you’re never home. Is that true, darling? He’s exaggerating, isn’t he?”

  “Of course he’s exaggerating,” I said, but Benno wasn’t exactly lying. Since Rhonda had moved out, I’d had to pick up more shifts in order to cover the full rent.

  “He said he misses you.”

  “Mom, everything’s fine. He’s just going through a stage. He’s a little clingy these days. I’m not sure why,” I lied.

  —

  I knew why. It had been two in the morning when I got back the last time from another fogless visit to the Valley of the Moon. I crept into the house as quietly as I could. I put my key in the lock and opened the door.

  “Mama?” said Benno.

  Benno and Rhonda were sitting on the couch. Rhonda looked exhausted. Benno was wide awake, his face streaked with tears.

  “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

  “Where were you?” Benno cried. He leapt up from the couch and ran to me.

  “Sweetheart, sweetheart. Calm down. I’m right here.”

  He moaned, “You left me.”

  “Benno, I didn’t leave you. Rhonda came to spend the night with you, like she does every month. You have a standing date every full moon. Isn’t that fun?”

  Rhonda and Ginger had moved to the basement apartment once they got married. She’d gotten pregnant almost immediately, but even after her daughter, Penny, was born, she still gamely came up to babysit on the full moons.

  As for me, I had my routine down to a science. I didn’t leave for the Valley of the Moon until well after Benno fell asleep, and if the fog wasn’t there, I left the Valley of the Moon immediately after midnight. Most full moon nights Benno didn’t even know I’d been gone.

  And if the fog was there, Rhonda and I had worked out a deal. She agreed to cover for me, to get Benno off to school in the morning, and I agreed never to spend more than a twenty-four-hour period in Greengage. The only time I’d stayed longer was when Benno was in Newport.

  Rhonda had stopped asking me about what I did there long ago, just as I’d stopped trying to convince her it was real. But Benno was no dummy. He knew my leaving on full moon nights was different from me working a late shift or going out on a date; in his heart he understood that wherever I went I was unreachable. That’s what had awoken him. That was the panic.

  “No, it’s not fun,” he wailed.

  I motioned to Rhonda that she could leave. She slipped out the door.

  I led Benno back to the couch and pulled him into my lap. “Benno, how old are you now?”

  “Nine,” he whispered. We’d just celebrated his birthday a week ago.

  “Yes, nine,” I said. “And you know what that means?”

  He punched the cushion.

  “Stop.” I grabbed his hand and unfurled his fingers. “It means you’re a big boy. And big boys have to—”

  “Where do you go?” he shouted.

  Startled by the directness of his question, I answered truthfully. “To the Valley of the Moon.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “What’s in the Valley of the Moon?”

  “Besides the moon?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, it’s a very beautiful place. Magic, kind of, especially on full moon nights.”

  “Why do you have to go?”

  “Because—sometimes moms forget about magic. And they need to be reminded.”

  He bit his lip.

  “You understand that, don’t you? You know about magic, too. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Yep, I knew you did. You’re just that kind of boy.”

  He threaded his fingers through the holes in the crocheted afghan. “Can you take me with you?”

  “Someday. When you’re in need of magic.”

  “When I lose mine?”

  “Yes, sweetheart, when you lose yours. But let’s hope that day never comes.”

  His face crumpled. “That doesn’t help,” he sobbed. “It just makes me feel worse.”

  “Sweetheart.”

  He wept harder.

  “Benno. Listen to me. Okay?”

  He nodded, but kept crying.

  “I’ll always be with you. I’ll never leave you. We’ll always be together.”

  But even as I said it, I knew I was lying. It is the pledge every mother implicitly or explicitly makes to her child, but it’s the pledge no mother can ever keep.

  —

  “Well, something’s going on,” said my mother. “Maybe you could spend a little more time with him. I’ll send you some money. Take him somewhere special. Go away for the weekend. To Stinson Beach or Petaluma.”

  “Mom, there’s nothing in Petaluma but cows and chicken farms.”

  “Really? The name is so misleading. It sounds like such a pretty place.”

  I heard her open the fridge. Peel back plastic wrap. Leftovers.

  “What are you eating?”

  “A pork chop.”

  My mother was not a sweets person. No cookies and milk for her, even for a late night snack.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Sleeping. I should warn you—he wrote you a letter.”

  “Dad wrote me a letter?”

  I spoke to my dad through my mom. She relayed messages to me, by which I mean she said things that were out of character for her that I could only attribute to my father.

  “Well, not really a letter. More of an invitation. You’ll see.” She tried to sound breezy.

  “What do you mean, an invitation? Like to a party?”

  “I can’t really say.”

  “Oh, okay. Great, Mom. I’m going to bed now and I’m sure I’ll have a very good sleep thanks to you and all this good news.”

  “Honey, honey, don’t do that. Don’t go.”

  I hung up the phone.

  —

  “You have to take Benno with you to Greengage,” said Rhonda, when I told her about the conversation with my mother. “This isn’t working anymore.”

  She glanced over at Penny, asleep in her playpen, her little rump sticking up in the air. Penny was nearly two now and the darling of 428 Elizabeth Street. Benno had become a big brother to her; they adored one another. Ginger had taken a job across the bay at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, which meant we all saw less of him. Still, Rhonda and I made a point of getting our families together for dinner at least once a month.

  “You can’t be serious. He’s nine. He’d never be able to keep that sort of secret.”

  “Then don’t make him keep it a secret. Stop making it into such a big deal. Tell him the truth. It’s a commune.”

  “It’s not a commune. And what’s he going to say when he sees how they dress? How old-fashioned they are? That there’s no electricity?”

  “Tell him they’re a bunch of hippies. Or a religious sect like the Amish. He’ll love it.”

  “And the fog? How do I explain the fog?”

  “Lux, forget the goddamned fog. Just take him there.”

  “I can’t take him. Joseph made
me promise. No strangers.”

  Rhonda glared at me. “He is not a stranger. He is your son. Surely this Joseph would welcome him.”

  Would he? I wasn’t sure.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Lux, maybe it’s time for you to stop going. Maybe this place has served its purpose. Have you thought of that?”

  —

  “Mom, Mom, it’s a letter from Grandpa,” said Benno. He looked stunned. “It’s for you, not me. Where’s mine?” He started to open it. “It must be for both of us.”

  “Uh-uh-uh.” I grabbed the envelope from him. “It’s addressed to me.”

  Benno sat in the chair and waited. I slid the envelope into my back pocket.

  “You’re not going to open it now?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “When are you going to open it?”

  “When I’m not about to leave for work.”

  Four hours later I locked myself in a bathroom stall at Seven Hills and tore open the envelope.

  Lux,

  It occurs to me Benno might be feeling unmoored because of you and me. Clearly he needs more stability in his life. I think it’s time we both work on rectifying that situation. Benno is nine now and I’d like to bring him with me to Lapis Lake this summer.

  I would like you to come as well. Some of my happiest memories are of the time the two of us spent together at the lake. Perhaps if we went back there, all three of us, it would start to turn things around.

  Let me know,

  Dad

  I put the lid down and sat on the toilet. Even though he wrote that he wanted me to come and that the happiest times of his life had been with me at Lapis Lake, all I could do was read between the lines. He hadn’t said it, but he might as well have. The reason Benno was unmoored was because I wasn’t providing a stable enough life for him.

  I hung my head between my legs, tried to catch my breath, and thought of Joseph, Martha, and Fancy. It was almost May for them. In the vineyard the buds must be breaking. The sorrel and chives would soon need to be mulched.

  When I’d blown off college and run away to San Francisco, seeking freedom and adventure, I’d found just the opposite. I’d become everything my father feared I would: an uneducated, invisible, and marginalized member of society. The woman in the line in front of you, scrambling to find loose change at the bottom of her purse. The woman whose son wore the same pair of pants to school three days in a row. The woman whose hair smelled like fried fish.