Moondance

by Black, Karen M.

  She turned the photo over to find Sophie’s handwriting: “G and A at the Tuesday night jam.” Now she was getting somewhere. She studied the face of the man in the photo. It was the same man, she was sure of it. She compared the photo of the man she had found in Sophie’s bedroom. Bingo. Not “Love Y” but “Love G”. The large, open loops in Sophie’s handwriting made it look like a Y. She thought about Gregg, the brother she didn’t remember. She looked into the man’s face as her eyes filled with tears.

  “You’re my father.”

  • • •

  PLACING THE PHOTO CAREFULLY on Sophie’s bedside table in her direct line of sight, Althea sat on Sophie’s bed and opened the laptop. She looked through the drive. Though Sophie had Microsoft Office, she appeared to have no Word documents. She clicked on her email program. Sophie had twenty-six new messages, all with the same Subject line: “You have a response to your ad!” And another: “Your photo has been added to your profile!”

  She clicked on Sent messages. Nothing. She went back to the Inbox and clicked on a message “Your profile is now live on the system” and found a link which led to the dating profile. Her own face smiled back at her — the night in Sophie’s solarium just before she started at White Light.

  Sophie was placing personal ads, pretending to be her.

  The ad Sophie placed was brief. “If you feel we’ve met before, write me and tell me why.” Her ID was Althea1111. She went back to the responses Sophie received, scanning a few. Nebulous descriptions of meetings, romantic confessions and dream descriptions. One stating “We haven’t met, but I love your eyes. Would love to stare into them over a martini. Call me.” And another “What are you, into witchcraft or something? lol.”

  Twenty-six messages and Sophie hadn’t responded to any of them. It was three in the morning, and still dark outside. She had been working non-stop. Althea stared at the screen and was overcome with a deep weariness. What was Sophie doing? For that matter, what the hell was she doing?

  Althea’s flesh felt as if it was sliding off her face, and her vision narrowed as if she was peering through a fluffy cave of cotton-baton. When the sweet amber scent came, she inhaled deeply and each time she did, she felt closer to sleep. She hunched over, a bit off balance, tears of exhaustion on her cheeks, and then she felt fingers on her face, under her chin and with them, a tickle in her heart and the whisper Look at me.

  She stumbled to Sophie’s window, pulling it open. As she stood, swaying and light-headed, the night air flowed over her face. Althea found the moon as it emerged from behind some clouds, an old friend. It grinned at her as if they shared a secret and she thought about when she stood in front of it just a few days before, conveying her wish, her heart breaking with the intensity of her desire. She had said it aloud and today it felt so foreign to her, so foolish. You want what? the moon asked. Well we can’t give you that, but how about this and this and this.

  She unraveled then, the room spinning, her tears a low wail of despair. She twisted away from the window, falling to her knees, getting up, staggering in a circle until she fell onto the floor. She rolled on her side, and pulled her knees to her chest, her hands over her mouth to stifle her sobs. She was vaguely aware of the insanity of her actions.

  The air melded with her tears. She felt herself drift and fall, hovering in that place between despair, exhaustion and sleep. When her body warmed, it seemed natural, and when the air became dense, the feather touch started on her face and moved to her breasts. She slid into the sensation, surrendered to it, at once accepting and remembering what had come before, all that had been forgotten.

  He hovered over her and took shape, forming himself against her body, suspending her on this side of sleep. Her eyes were closed and she could feel his arm around her waist and lips moving over her back, the air cooling the beads of perspiration that had re-formed as she arched at his ticklish touch. His form moved down her spine and then in circles, a hand draped over her, cupping her breasts, then a warm suckling sensation there, moving down to her belly, and between her legs, becoming denser.

  He nudged her knees and she opened them for him, her body encased in a perfumed cloud, moving until the pressure was between her legs, and she felt a warmth there and a gentle sucking as she climaxed. Her chest heaved and flushed, her head moved toward the window, then away from it. He was in her nostrils and mouth, she was breathing him in, the soft amber scent in every breath, and she embraced him, her lucid dream, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She could feel his long hair slipping over her skin. His shape cupped her, a full body embrace and as she buried her head in his neck, he softened until finally, she lay alone with her hands crossed in front of her, the air moving over the film of perspiration coating her body.

  Knows me she thought. Knows.

  chapter 49

  SOPHIE’S HOSTESS LED HER through the house which was long and narrow, past a modest kitchen to a room that at one time was the living quarters for domestic help. The tropical air created the sensation that the house was alive. In its own way, it was.

  The room was compact, comfortable and sparse. A white cot with a soft plump mattress sat against the wall, and a pink circle of light created by a skylight pooled onto the crisp cotton sheets. A black metal box sat atop a circular table beside the bed. A chair with a caned back and a white-pillowed seat waited.

  Sophie put her bag down beside the cot and reached inside, removing the scarf-wrapped package. She held it out to her hostess, who took it.

  “This records everything I’ve done, everything she taught me.”

  “For thirty years.”

  “This is the most recent one.”

  The woman took the package and removed the scarf. Inside was a black leather notebook. She flipped through and held up a picture that had been inserted in a fold.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “What you’re looking for is on the last page.” The woman turned to the last page and her eyes wavered.

  “It’s perfectly done.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And is she —”

  “No.”

  “Have you seen —”

  “Yes I have. I found him. I was shown.” The woman looked up at Sophie, her dark eyes unreadable. She nodded. There was nothing more to say.

  Sophie’s hostess lit a candle and left Sophie alone in the room, shutting the door softly behind her. Sophie took off her clothes, folded them carefully and put them on top of a small basket in the corner of the room. Her heart racing, she put on the full, loose white cotton gown that had been draped over the chair, and sat on the side of the bed. She meditated, and within a few minutes, her heart rate returned to normal. With it, a sense of peace descended, a feeling of rightness and completion. Sophie pictured Althea’s face, rosy and glowing, her smile broad, her eyes shining, and her chest filled with love.

  “You can come in now,” Sophie said. Her hostess entered, carrying a small, dense looking pillow, which she placed on the floor beside the bed. Thirty-two years ago, Sophie had knelt with Albert and this woman in a room similar to this one.

  “We don’t have much time.”

  “We’ll have just enough time,” Sophie looked into the woman’s eyes. The woman looked away.

  “Please lie down.”

  Sophie lay down on the cot, looked up through the skylight, and breathed deeply. With each breath, she could feel herself expand and soften, rising up, her heart opening, the pain in her knees a memory. The light that shone through the skylight was more concentrated now. The sky itself was pink orange, with streaks of red and mauve, the most beautiful colors Sophie had ever seen.

  She closed her eyes.

  chapter 50

  THERE WAS THE SWEET amber scent and the memories of his body covering hers and his tongue, the misty-morning light and the siren.

  Althea tensed at its shrillness. When she lived in the city, sirens were common. Since living with Sophie, she had become used to the quiet. Strugglin
g up from Sophie’s bedroom floor, she caught her foot on a cord and knocked the laptop to the floor. She sat against Sophie’s bed with her arms crossed and her eyes closed Knows me. For a moment, she felt a familiar stir.

  Slowly, her memory returned. Her last day at White Light, just yesterday, seemed like a bad dream. She remembered sitting in the boardroom, viewing her colleagues from the inside out. She remembered the final meeting with Stefan, the ride home with Foster and his gross invasion of her privacy. She remembered getting Sophie’s letter, drinking too much and almost passing out in the attic. She remembered all of these things, as she now remembered Him, the intense attraction she felt for him and his seduction.

  In the morning light, she recalled the day before dispassionately as if recalling a fading dream. Her mind turned instead to the facts, the tangibles, what she knew, what she could learn, what she had found. ‘G’, the man who was likely her father, the internet ad, Sophie’s letter, which, if it were not for the red envelope, she might have discarded as fiction.

  She thought about what was happening to her. The old wooden clock in the hallway ticked, and in the spaces between, Althea decided how she would spend the day before Sophie was scheduled to come home.

  • • •

  ALTHEA ARRIVED AT THE small library just before it opened. She suspected that she could probably access the information she was looking for on the internet, but she thought that she’d start here, where she had access to the library staff.

  A pleasant looking woman with white hair pinned up, and softly rouged cheeks approached her. In the woman’s presence, Althea was infused with a feeling of peace.

  “I need to know how to research birth records.”

  “Putting together a family tree?”

  “Sort of.”

  The woman led Althea to a computer. Curiosity. There was a lightness about this woman, a gentleness. Five minutes later, Althea was searching birth records and newspaper databases in the United States and in Canada.

  She started with Albert’s family. She could not find a birth record for Albert Brecht in New Orleans. She tried another tack, and cross-referenced her search in the local Louisiana papers.

  After two hours, she switched gears, searching for Sophie’s birth records. She didn’t find those, but she did find a name change request in 1976, the year Althea was born. Name changed from Emma Sophie Owens, to Sophie Brecht. She went back to the birth records the year Sophie was born, but looked under the name Emma instead. She found Emma, born to Richard and Gwen Owens in Durham county, Canada.

  Sophie told her that her parents had died when she was a teenager. She began searching for death certificates and nothing came up. She did a wider search and found the information she was looking for, though it was not what she expected. Sophie’s natural father, Richard Owens, died in 1972, twenty years after Sophie said. Gwen Owens died ten years after that.

  She went back to researching the Brechts, expanding her search to North America. She couldn’t find Albert’s birth record. Tension rose in the pit of her stomach. It felt like a tickle. She recognized the feeling all too well — it was the fear students felt when they had a deadline. To her left, a serious-looking brunette with pale skin, pink lip gloss and three plastic barrettes lining her temples sat down at a computer beside her. The fear intensified.

  “Shit,” the girl said. “It’s not working.” She looked at Althea.

  “I’m almost done,” Althea said. “Just a few minutes.” She concentrated, putting up the wall and remembered the intensity and the exhaustion of the day before. It was getting busier now. She couldn’t stay here for long.

  Althea made some notes. Was she onto something? She went back to the research assistant at the reference desk and asked how she might access the databases from home. As she listened to the woman relaying instructions, she felt calm. The assistant smiled at her. Althea smiled back. Not everyone was angry, she thought. Not everyone was hiding who they were. This woman felt calming, comfortable, authentic. The same on the inside as she was on the outside.

  • • •

  IN HER APARTMENT, SHE deepened her search on Albert, using jazz references in New Orleans. Nothing came up around Albert Brecht. She tried searching “The Hot Five”. She found an old newspaper article doing a review of the band. The heading was “Al (Ivories) Chauncy keeps the Hot Five cool.” She looked at the heading again and then at the picture. It was Albert, but she had never heard of the name Chauncy. On all of the jazz albums she had of his, how had she missed that? She printed the article and re-read it.

  She searched for Chauncy in New Orleans, and found a newspaper article entitled: Mother Chauncy accused of casting love spell. The article reported on a court case in which a white woman testified that a voodoo curse created by Mother Chauncy caused the death of the woman’s husband. The witness reported that Chauncy had seduced her husband, and that when he didn’t leave his marriage, she put a curse on him. Althea looked at the date. It was the same year that Albert left New Orleans for Chicago to look for his father.

  Althea found one more reference to Mother Chauncy in the papers: her obituary. The article references three children, two boys and a girl. The oldest was Albert Merrill.

  Albert’s smiling eyes looked into hers.

  Your mother practised black magic.

  Princess jumped up on her lap, startling her, and she felt Princess’ hunger. She fed Princess. Something else was nagging at her.

  With a new burst of energy, Althea re-examined the picture of Albert in New Orleans, with the inscription: “To young Brecht (and his lady friend with the voice).” Then it hit her. The inscription wasn’t to Albert. It was signed from Albert.

  Althea returned to the boxes in Sophie’s attic. She looked for those dated in the 1970’s, and pulled them apart. Inside, was a number of pictures of the same young man at the piano and a newspaper clipping of the Chicago Tribune. Dated July, 1974, the clipping read: “Mr. and Mrs. Trenton Brecht sadly announce the death of their son Gregory T. Brecht, Corporal in the United States army, while serving his country in Vietnam. Sadly missed by his parents, sister Sarah and loving wife, Clara. Services to be held ...” Althea stopped reading. The photograph of Gregory was the same man in the postcard. Will miss you, love G.

  Gregory Brecht died two years before Althea was born. This man wasn’t her father, couldn’t be her father. Althea felt disappointment, her eyes tearing, then anger. She threw the contents of the box across the dusty, unpainted floor and stood with clenched fists, talking out loud.

  “You changed your name to Brecht — why?” she said. “You must have had an affair with him. But to change your name? Years after he died?” It didn’t make sense. She stared at the picture. Why change your name? Why put the picture in the box with the books about me?

  Becoming.

  Althea fought a wave of fatigue. She had been working non-stop for hours and she wasn’t even sure what time it was. She felt faint, she should eat. Instead, she sat at her computer. She searched “Chauncy and voodoo and New Orleans.”

  As the list of sites came up, she found herself overheated and off-balance, falling to one side as if she was fainting. Her perception narrowed. Her head bobbed like a dozing commuter and her body was slack. She fell onto the floor, barely feeling it as she landed on her shoulder. He took hold quickly this time.

  Althea felt his shape above her, more solid than ever before, his glistening white skin, his hairless body, the way he moved, and she understood that he was transforming himself to whatever she needed him to be. His body was firm and lean, and his legs extended next to hers yet were suspended above her. His perfume mingled with hers, his blue-black hair, shiny and glistening, fanned over his cheeks as he gazed at her. With her eyes shut, she could imagine his eyes, jewel green and unblinking, fixed on her face.

  He stayed with her and when she fell

  she was leaning against a wall in a large room, with shining stone floors and textured walls, washed with a living pat
ina. It was the place she had glimpsed in her dreams, the place that revealed itself to her at Starfish. The place that wanted her to dance.

  An erect form the color of storm clouds stood in the center of the room. The form walked toward her. Behind it, shadows emerged from the glow of the walls, dark grey silhouettes of different sizes and shapes. They stopped, standing shoulder to shoulder as if at a high school dance. The tallest figure stepped forward and extended its hand to her. She turned away from the figure and faced Him, her eyes closed. Her hands were free, and she touched him as if she was blind, her palms flat, her fingers over the curve of his brow, thumbs moving over his eyes which were softer.

  “Look at me,” he whispered.

  “What do you know?” she asked. In this space, touching him felt so normal, yet so completely separate from the life that she knew. In this in-between place, she still had a desire to know who he was, why this was happening to her. His silence was unnerving.

  “What can you show me?”

  “All that’s underneath.”

  Balancing against him, his hands on her hips, she cupped his face, opened her eyes, and saw white skin, black hair and brilliant green, just as she imagined dry in the rain and then the pain came, slashing through her, indescribable shame in her heart, like fire, and she fell to the pulsating floor.

  “Yes,” he said, dropping to the ground, pulling her head toward him. “Look at me.”

  Althea sobbed, her eyes stinging, her heart a searing red mass. She shook her head violently, moving away from him. She wanted to know, wanted him to tell her, but she wouldn’t do that again, wouldn’t look at him. It hurt too much.