Valley of the Moon

by Melanie Gideon

  “Not yet. Damn.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “We missed the state liquor store.”

  When I was a kid, we always stopped at the liquor store and loaded up, because the booze was tax-free. He got beer. I got red licorice whips.

  “I packed you a flask,” said my mother.

  “She likes it when I drink now. She pushes it on me.”

  “Yes, George, I want you drunk.”

  “She wants you to be happy,” I said.

  “She wants me unconscious.”

  “Dad!”

  “You think I don’t know I’m a pain in her ass?”

  He rolled down the window and tipped his nose up like a dog, sniffing the wind.

  “Humph, not so rural anymore,” he said, when I turned onto Rural Road 125. I had the same butterflies in my stomach I’d had when I was a child.

  “When did they pave it?”

  “A while ago.”

  “It’s nice. Easier on the suspension.”

  “It’s not nice. The dirt road was fine. Now that it’s paved, leaf peepers come down here. I had to put up a No Trespassing sign.”

  “George, you only come up a few times a year. You can afford to be generous. Let other people enjoy it, too,” said my mother.

  I drove slowly down the maple-lined road. The leaves were brilliant shades of orange, red, and yellow. It was peak foliage season. Woodsmoke hung in the air.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been here in the fall,” I said. My father had always come alone on Columbus Day weekend to close down the cabin for the winter.

  I pulled into our driveway and parked.

  “My God,” my mother said. “It looks exactly the same. Like no time has passed at all.”

  “I can smell the lake,” said my father.

  He excitedly swung his legs out the car door, but even that tiny effort cost him. He closed his eyes and breathed heavily for a minute or two. When he opened them, he looked defeated.

  “Give him a minute,” said my mother.

  “Where’s the key, Dad?”

  “In the usual place,” he said. “Go with her, Miriam.”

  “I’m staying with you. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “Go with her, I’m fine,” said my father.

  “You might want to wait, Mom, let me air things out a bit.”

  “Go ahead, Miriam,” said my father.

  —

  I ducked under the porch and retrieved the key, which hung from a rusty nail. My father hadn’t visited at all this summer, which meant the place had sat unused for over a year.

  “Brace yourself,” I said to my mother.

  I slid the key into the lock and opened the door hesitantly, anticipating the stale cardboard scent of decaying mice. Instead the cabin smelled pleasantly of cedar and lemon cleanser.

  We stepped into the cabin and gasped. Every surface had been scoured clean. The curtains were pulled and fresh air streamed through the open windows. A pot of mums sat on the counter.

  I opened the fridge and was hit by a blast of cool air. Not only was it running, but it was fully stocked: strawberries, a quart of milk, a pint of cream. A roasted chicken. A container of potato salad. A jar of pickles. A six-pack of Coors Light. A wedge of cheddar and sliced salami. A package of Oreos and a bottle of Boone’s Farm apple wine, my mother’s favorite.

  We peeked in the bedroom. The bed was neatly made up with fresh sheets. There was a stack of clean towels on the dresser and a candle on the bedside table.

  “I feel like Sara Crewe in A Little Princess,” I said.

  My mother had her hand cupped over her mouth, her eyes wet. “He did this for us.”

  “He did it for you,” I said.

  She nodded. “I suppose this means we’re spending the night.”

  “I think that’s the idea.”

  “Lux!” my father shouted.

  “I’ll get him,” I said. “You stay.”

  —

  I took my father’s arm and helped him out of the car. “It’s like Christmas in there.”

  “Did she like it?”

  “Yes, she liked it.”

  “Was she surprised?”

  “She certainly was. How did you do it?”

  “I hired a caretaker. She looks after the place. After I got sick, it was too hard to open and close up the cabin by myself.”

  Slowly we walked around to the front of the cabin and climbed the porch stairs. He nodded in satisfaction at the two rocking chairs, each of which had received a new coat of glossy green paint. When we stepped into the cabin, he grinned.

  “George,” said my mother.

  “Miriam,” said my father.

  “You little sneak. This isn’t a day trip. We’re not going home this afternoon, are we?”

  He sat down in a kitchen chair. “One night. All right? That’s all I want. One last night here with my family.”

  —

  I was the only one awake. My mother had fallen asleep on the pullout couch. My father snored raspily in the bedroom. The loons were calling, that distinctive, forlorn cry. Hoo-hoo-hoo. My thoughts were forlorn, too: Vivi is so sick. I may never see Joseph again. My father is riddled with cancer.

  I put on my bathing suit and walked down to the lake. I dipped a toe into the water. Not too bad. I dove in before I could change my mind.

  The water was glorious. I’d always loved night swimming the best. I stayed in as long as I could bear it, but when I started to shiver uncontrollably I went back to the cabin. My mother was still conked out on the sofa; she’d had three glasses of wine, two glasses past her limit. I thought about making coffee but I didn’t want to wake my parents. Instead I lit a candle and perused the bookshelf. There were lots of paperbacks, mostly thrillers, John le Carré and James Patterson, along with the classics my father had read to me when I was a girl. On the topmost shelf I found the copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe I’d sent Benno the year we’d been apart. On the inside cover in pencil he’d written, Property of Bennett Lysander.

  Had my father read it to him?

  I didn’t hear him snoring anymore. I opened the door and his bed was empty. He must have gone to the outhouse. But his slippers were neatly lined up beneath the dresser. He’d left the cabin without shoes?

  I checked the outhouse. He wasn’t there.

  “Dad?” I called. “Dad?”

  I checked the car. Empty. I started to panic.

  It was four in the morning. I got a flashlight and began making my way through the woods. I walked through our neighbors’ yards, then back along the waterfront. I kept calling his name. I’d alternate between “Dad” and “George.” Finally, on my fourth round, I heard his tremulous voice: “Lux.”

  Three cabins down from ours, I found him. He was on the ground in front of the Harrises’ outhouse. He was barefoot, in his pajamas. I could just make out his face.

  “I had to go to the bathroom. I didn’t want to bother your mother.”

  He’d fallen.

  “Why aren’t you wearing shoes?” Of course he’d fallen. Not only was it dark, but one of his legs was two inches shorter than the other. “Let me look at your knee.”

  “No, goddamn it. I only skinned it.”

  “Okay. Can you stand if I help you?”

  He grunted and I stooped beside him. He put his arm around me and I gently hauled him up. We hobbled back toward our cabin.

  “Why did you go to the Harrises’? Why didn’t you go to our outhouse?”

  He gave me a confused look. He thought it was our outhouse.

  “I woke and you were gone.”

  “I went for a swim. I couldn’t sleep. Look. Here we are now.”

  We stood at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Come on, let’s get you back into bed,” I said.

  We climbed the stairs, but when I opened the front door he said, “I don’t want to go to bed. Not yet.”

  We settled into the chairs that s
till smelled of fresh paint.

  He was disheveled. His hair mussed, his bloody shin exposed. I felt light-headed with guilt. Finally, here we sat, all these years later, on the porch of our beloved cabin. No real rapprochement in sight and my father was dying. He was dying. How could I have let so much time pass?

  He coughed. “That summer. Nineteen sixty-four. The last summer you were at Lapis Lake? I knew you didn’t want to be here. What was I thinking? That we’d have this, the two of us, forever?” His voice cracked on forever.

  “Dad, stop. You have to conserve your energy. You can’t afford—”

  He looked at me with an anguished face. “Just listen. Please.”

  I sat back in my chair, my heart racing.

  “You were a teenager. You were bored. You wanted a bigger life. Of course you did—that was only natural. But I couldn’t bear to see it end. Only a damned fool thinks paradise will last.” He ran his hand over his scalp. “It can’t last; it’s not meant to. Look at this place. Run-down, falling apart, mice in the rafters. Why the hell would you have wanted to stay here?”

  Was he seriously asking me that question? “Because it was paradise, Dad.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes,” I said softly, letting the truth of that sink in.

  “But you—”

  I interrupted him. If I didn’t say this now, I never would.

  “I feel like I’ve spent all my life trying to find my way back to Lapis Lake, not literally the lake, but, you know, you. Us. The way we were. The way things were here.”

  He blinked hard.

  “I should have come when you asked me to. When you first brought Benno. It was such a nice gesture for you to invite me along. To give us a fresh start.”

  “I didn’t hear back from you. I thought maybe you didn’t get my letter.”

  “I got it. I was just—ashamed. My life was such a mess. If I’d have come back, the person I was then, I would have ruined this place for you. I didn’t want to do that. My memories of us at the lake are sacrosanct. What you taught me here. How you believed in me here. The way you loved me here—that’s what I built my life on. That’s how I got to this. To who I am now. To Benno. To Vivi.”

  To Joseph.

  He hung his head in despair. “It was my fault. I was such a stubborn, narrow-minded ass. I just couldn’t get over my disappointment that you hadn’t made the same choices I had, that you didn’t value the same things. I’m not talking about wanting to be at the lake—well, maybe that was the beginning of it—but I’m talking about school. Your education. The ways you got distracted.”

  Distracted. That was a civilized way of putting it. Dash. Dropping out of college and moving to San Francisco. Getting pregnant at nineteen.

  “Well, Dad, I certainly gave you every reason to be disappointed. I was young and stupid. I lost myself for a while. For longer than a while, actually.”

  “You didn’t lose yourself, Lux. I left you and I’ll never forgive myself for that. I made some attempts over the years to make amends, to reach out to you, but it hasn’t been enough.” He steepled his fingers in order to stop his hands from shaking. “Benno. Vivi being so sick. How do you manage?” he rasped.

  I went inside and got a box of tissues and a glass of water. I placed them on the table next to him. He took a sip of the water and stared out at the lake, trying to compose himself.

  “I manage, Dad, because I am loved. Because I found my own Lapis Lake. My own little paradise.”

  “Noe Valley?”

  “No, no.” I took a deep breath. “Greengage, Dad.”

  “Greengage?” he echoed.

  I hadn’t spoken the name to him since that terrible visit to Newport in 1980.

  “Benno and I go there pretty regularly now. It’s where Vivi’s father, Joseph, is from.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Your mother told me about this Joseph. Where is he?”

  “He’s in Greengage.”

  “Well, why isn’t he with you now? He’s got a daughter—a deathly ill daughter!”

  “He would be with us if he could. I promise you.”

  He squinted in disbelief.

  “Dad, you’re just going to have to take my word for it. We’re doing everything we can to be with each other. It’s just complicated. Getting to Greengage isn’t easy.”

  I grabbed a tissue and pressed it to my eyes, willing myself not to cry.

  “I don’t understand, Lux,” he finally said.

  “That’s because it’s impossible to understand.”

  He took my hand. It had been years, perhaps going back to childhood, since my father had held my hand.

  “Tell me. You love this Joseph? You love this place, Greengage?”

  “More than anything!” I cried. “And Benno loves it, too. And Vivi will, I know it, if I can just get her there. All this time, I’ve been living two lives. My heart in two different worlds. It’s just been so hard.”

  I began to sob. I had my eyes shut but I could feel his body shaking—he was crying, too. I breathed raggedly, trying to catch my breath. After a few minutes, I looked at him and he nodded.

  “Lux?”

  “Yeah” was all I could manage to say.

  He gave me a heartbreaking smile. “Darling girl.”

  Would anybody ever call me darling girl again?

  “You deserve a world that wants you,” he said.

  —

  A month later I got the call that he’d died in his sleep. Benno, Vivi, and I flew back to Newport for the funeral, then the following day we drove north to Lapis Lake to scatter his ashes.

  Vivi dropped a handful of ashes on the ground by the car. “Bye-bye,” she said, clutching my pant leg. She was too young to understand what was going on, how final death was. That she’d never see her grandfather again.

  I picked her up. She burrowed her face into the crook of my neck. She spent a lot of time there. If a neck could have had a head-shaped indentation worn in it, mine would.

  Benno was somber, placing handfuls of ashes in carefully chosen spots that my father had loved. At the base of Mount Fort. At the foot of the dining hall stairs.

  I rubbed my father’s ashes into the porch railing. How many times had he sat there, a book cracked open, reading to me? The smell of Coppertone drifting through the air.

  —

  “I’m going to walk out on the branch one last time,” I said, just before we were about to go.

  “Careful,” said my mother. “Don’t fall into the water.”

  I took a mental snapshot of her sitting on the steps, a steaming mug of tea in her hand. A sight I’d never seen and would likely never see again.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve done this hundreds of times,” I said, traversing the maple bough, arms outstretched for balance.

  I saw my name from three feet away. Etched into the wood with the dull blade of a Swiss Army knife.

  LUX WAS HERE.

  Years ago, my father had made me sand it out of the bough.

  Years ago, he’d carved it back in.

  Finally we were allowed to take Vivi home from the hospital. She’d had a procedure called a radiofrequency ablation. It was a last-ditch effort to stop her ever more frequent episodes. Dr. Walker told us that in most cases the procedure was ninety-five percent effective, but Vivi had been in the hospital for nearly three weeks, and when she got out, she was weaker than ever. It hadn’t made a damn difference.

  Only six months had passed, but she was a shadow of the little girl she’d been on her first birthday. She spent most of her days under a blanket watching reruns of Leave It to Beaver. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver,” she’d say to us when we walked into the room. She had an uncanny talent for mimicry. She belonged on the stage, not on the couch.

  She learned how to live with the constant light-headedness. She walked in a wide stance, making sure one foot was firmly planted before shuffling the other foot forward. She’d throw up in the morning upon waking, and once more in the late after
noon. She was thirsty all the time: always sucking on ice chips. But when she saw me or her precious Ba, she’d shriek with glee, hold out her arms, and wave like a concertgoer, and for a second the old Vivi would bust through.

  Benno had captured this moment perfectly with his camera, and I’d had the photo framed. In fact, Benno had documented just about every minute of Vivi’s life. He couldn’t stop taking pictures of her; it was a compulsion. I’d tucked every photo carefully away. A visual record for Joseph, to supplement my journal. Vivi loved being photographed, of course. She had a particular face she’d put on when she knew her brother had trained his lens on her. She’d dip her head and bat her eyelashes. “Act natural, Viv!” he’d cry. “Pretend I’m not taking a picture.”

  She wasn’t capable of it.

  In January, my mother had sold the house in Newport, donated her old Lilly Pulitzer shifts to Goodwill, and moved into the basement apartment at 428 Elizabeth Street. We told her about Greengage then. Whether she believed us or not, I didn’t know, but she believed we believed, and that was enough for now.

  She’d taken over Vivi’s care during the days while I was at work. All in all, we had a fine support system set up, and Vivi couldn’t have been more loved. Still, we all knew the truth. These days were numbered. If I didn’t get Vivi back to Greengage soon—I couldn’t bear to think of what would happen.

  —

  “I don’t know if we should bring her,” said Benno. “The party did her in.”

  It was 11:00 A.M., usually Vivi’s most wide-awake time, but she was asleep on the couch. Yesterday we’d celebrated her half birthday with great fanfare. We’d taken her down to the Embarcadero to see the circus and then afterwards out to her favorite restaurant. She’d had one spoonful of ice cream and promptly thrown up. It was too much.

  I understood Benno’s reticence. This would be my twenty-seventh useless trip in a row to the Valley of the Moon, and I was despairing as well. In my darker moments I wondered if I was being punished for having Joseph’s child. In my darkest moments I wondered if Vivi was being punished for being born. Did her existence break some fundamental law of time? Could a creature who was half of the future and half of the past live? Would we be banished from Greengage forever?