Blue Moon

by Luanne Rice

  Except for the six months at Maine, Cass and Billy had been inseparable; she had quit Maine because she missed him. They’d gone through a phase of dating other people, but in truth Billy had courted Cass her whole life. It had amazed Jimmy when they’d settled down, knocked off the craziness. They had three beautiful kids. Josie had a problem, Jimmy knew. It broke his heart, the way she tried so hard to get her mouth around sounds that came automatically to everyone else. But it hurt him worse to see how it affected Cass. She hardly ever left Josie’s side; she was like an interpreter assigned to a foreign princess.

  “I hope to hell Billy’s not having a midlife crisis or something,” Jimmy said. “Buying a new boat is a major step.”

  “Look, I shouldn’t have said anything,” George said. “It’s just talk. The kid has big dreams.”

  “Hell, that’s nothing new. He married my daughter, didn’t he?”

  After four nights of noticing this guy come in alone and drink his Scotch at the bar instead of outside on the terrace, where the single girls hung around, Nora Keating knew he was watching her. His eyes would follow her until she looked him dead on, and then he would smile. At first her suspicious side took over. Maybe he was in the restaurant business. Maybe he planned to open a place across the bay or on one of the islands and he wanted to figure out Lobsterville’s formula for success.

  But on Thursday, when she finally said hello to him, his expression turned so happy and open, Nora felt herself blush. He looked about forty-five, taller than six feet, blond, with sensitive blue eyes. Very sensitive. He looked like someone whose feelings got hurt easily. She’d noticed the first night he came in that he didn’t wear a wedding ring and his finger didn’t have a telltale indentation or white ring line.

  “Hello,” Nora said, passing by.

  “Hello,” the man said, and he gave her such a wonderful, open smile, she had to look twice. Nora couldn’t be sure, but she thought he had a southern accent.

  She told the Conways, sitting on barstools, that their regular table was ready. Abe Conway struggled to his feet, then stood by for Eileen. He held his arms tense, waiting to catch her, like a fireman holding a safety net under the window of a burning house. Nora wished her mother would tell them they were too old to sit on barstools. Mary could crack a joke about it, and no one would get upset. All it would take was one fall for Eileen to break her hip and wind up in a nursing home. Not to mention the potential for a lawsuit against the restaurant. Never mind that the Conways were her grandmother’s oldest friends; when medical bills started pouring in, people changed their friendly tunes fast.

  Leading the Conways through the crowd, Nora did something she had never before allowed herself to do and would have fired any Lobsterville employee for doing: instead of walking the Conways to their table, she stopped short beside the bar and told them to go on ahead. “You know the way,” she said to Abe. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Of course not. Thanks, darling,” Abe said, palming her five dollars, as usual. Nora slipped the bill into the pocket of her tight black skirt. She did a U-turn and walked back to the blond man.

  “Will you be having dinner with us tonight?” she asked.

  “’Us’?” the man said, giving her a flirtatious grin.

  “Here at the restaurant,” Nora said, deadpan. You can’t judge a book by its cover, she thought: he looks nice, but he’s just another wise guy.

  “Because what I was thinking was, maybe if you haven’t had your dinner, we could have it together,” the man said with a definite southern accent.

  “I’m working,” Nora said.

  “Oh, I figured that,” the man said. “Four nights now I’ve come in here after a long day of meetings and seen you running your head off, and I’ve thought, that lady needs to sit down.”

  “Wish I could,” Nora said, but she didn’t smile. She never minded acting friendly toward the customers; she considered it part of her job. But something about this one put her on guard. At the same time, she wished that she’d worn sheerer pantyhose and that she hadn’t canceled her facial last Saturday. “Do you have business in town?” she asked.

  “In Providence,” he said. “But I decided to stay down here. I wanted to see a little of the New England coastline. Sure is beautiful.”

  “Isn’t it?” Nora said. She reached into the pocket of her white linen blazer for a cigarette. He took a pack of Lobsterville matches from an ashtray on the bar and lit it for her.

  “Since you let me light your cigarette, you have to tell me your name.”

  “Nora Keating,” she said, exhaling.

  “I’m Willis Randecker,” he said.

  “And where is Willis Randecker from?”

  “From Savannah, Georgia,” he replied.

  “A long way from home,” Nora said. Sometimes, talking to handsome men, she came out with phrases that sounded like song lyrics. She recognized this, and it embarrassed her. But Nora had a sexy voice, as throaty as Mary’s had been before she’d scorched the sex appeal out of it with too many Lucky Strikes, and Nora knew she made the phrases sound inviting and suggestive.

  “Look, Nora,” Willis said. “I don’t want to be too forward, but you should really consider quitting. I was a smoker myself for many years, and it took a heart attack before I wised up. I shouldn’t even have lit it for you, but I’m not the type of guy who lets a lady light her own cigarette.”

  He’d made her feel self-conscious, but she wasn’t about to let him know. She held the cigarette in the air between them, at about shoulder height. Her hands were her best feature. She thought that a cigarette between her fingers emphasized their length and elegance. Sometimes she stared at her hands because she thought they were beautiful; she knew it was vain, but they reminded her of the kind of hands Lauren Bacall must have. Nora’s hands were the only part of her body she liked.

  And then Willis did the strangest thing: he took the cigarette right out of Nora’s hand and stubbed it out in the ashtray. Nora couldn’t look at him. She knew she should be mad, but she wasn’t. If she looked at him, she might start to cry.

  “Gosh, I shouldn’t have done that. I know how rude I must seem. Something came over me, that’s all I can say.” Willis was shaking his head, wiping his brow. Still, Nora didn’t speak. She felt as if every hair on her body were standing on end. She glanced at her wrist, but all her wrist hairs were lying down.

  “Nora?” Willis said nervously.

  “When did you have your heart attack?” Nora asked. She could feel the blood pulsing at her temples.

  “Two years ago last December fourteenth,” Willis said. “I smoked three packs a day, I ate bacon and eggs every morning. Used to put salt on my toast in the morning. Hell, I salted everything. Apples, peanut butter and jelly, pecan pie. Everything. Then, whammo. I knew what was happening to me the minute I felt the pain. Unbelievable pain, Nora, up and down my arm.”

  “But you …” But you survived? was what Nora had been about to ask.

  “I changed my life,” Willis said. “First thing I did was quit smoking. That was so strange. All my life, since I was twelve, I’d lived for cigarettes, one after the other. It got so I wouldn’t go to a movie because they wouldn’t let you smoke in the theater.”

  “What else did you do?” Nora asked. She wasn’t used to talking to strange men without holding a cigarette in her hand; she couldn’t believe it, but for the moment, the desire to smoke had left her. She felt light as a feather, ethereal. She imagined she was hovering above the bar, like someone having an out-of-body experience.

  “I changed my diet entirely, lost twenty pounds. Now I season my food with lemon juice instead of salt.” He grinned suddenly, and Nora noticed a wide space between his two front teeth. He pulled from his pocket a yellow plastic squeeze lemon.

  Nora laughed. “You don’t need that here. We serve all our fish with fresh lemon.”

  “Not every place does,” Willis said.

  A comfortable silence unfolded between
them. They might have been sitting alone on the balcony of Nora’s condo instead of here in the crowded bar. Nora knew she should relieve her mother at the reservations desk; the sauce chef had to leave early tonight, and Nora had to smooth things over in the kitchen. But she couldn’t move. She felt at peace, staring into Willis’s blue eyes. She caught a glimpse of Bonnie coming toward her. Leave me alone, she wished. And when she turned to say she’d be with her in a minute, Bonnie had gone.

  “That girl a friend of yours?” Willis asked.

  “My sister,” Nora said.

  “She works here, too?” Willis asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Nice,” Willis said, nodding. “It’s nice when a family can be together. That’s the way it should be.” He paused, cleared his throat. “Boy, you sure make it easy to talk. This isn’t the kind of thing you tell someone you’ve just met, but you want to know the biggest change I made after my heart attack?”

  Nora wasn’t sure exactly how, but she knew what he was about to say. “You got divorced,” she said.

  “But how did you guess? That’s what happened!” Willis exclaimed. “This is amazing, you and me being on the same wavelength like that.”

  “I guess you seem like the married type,” Nora said. “I know the difference. I don’t know why … I guess I meet a lot of people here. Some are the married type, some aren’t. So I took you for married, and then I didn’t see a wedding ring.”

  “I wore one for sixteen years,” Willis said. “And the first thing I thought after they took the tubes out of my nose was, I’m not happy. Not a bit happy, and lying there in the hospital, I had plenty of opportunity to figure out why. And so I got a divorce. How long’d you wear yours?”

  “My what?” Nora asked.

  “Your wedding band.”

  “I’ve never been married,” Nora said.

  “That surprises me,” Willis said. “That really surprises me.”

  Suddenly the silence turned awkward. Nora remembered that her mother was going to Providence that night to meet her father. “I have to get back to work,” she said.

  “I figured. You sure you can’t get your sister to fill in for you and join me for dinner instead?”

  Of all the nights for this to happen, Nora thought. She meets a man she likes, and her mother has the night off. Bonnie hardly ever worked at night, because of her kids. Nora didn’t exactly blame her, but it was moments like this that she felt different from her sisters. Cass and Bonnie were wives and mothers, and Nora was not—simple as that.

  “I can’t,” Nora said. “It just won’t work out tonight. Maybe …” She wanted to ask him if he was free tomorrow night; that would give her time to work things out.

  “That’s a rotten shame,” Willis said. “I was really hoping. I knew I should’ve asked you last night for dinner tonight, but the way you looked, I didn’t think you’d give me the time of day.”

  “There’s always tomorrow,” Nora said in her torch-song lyric voice.

  “Tomorrow I fly home to Savannah,” Willis said.

  Nora felt her heartbeat flatten out. Her breath came steady once again. Things were back to normal. Even her eyes, which hadn’t left Willis’s face, went back to work. They began to scan the room for regular customers, for deadbeats, for drunks, for sailors. Nora wanted a cigarette.

  “Would you like a table anyway?” Nora asked. “We’re booked, but I could squeeze you in.”

  “Nah. If I have to eat alone, I’m going back to the hotel. I’ll call room service. I’ve got my lemon. They never serve lemons with room service,” he said, squeezing his lemon. “I come back on business from time to time. Maybe we could have dinner then.”

  “That would be fine,” Nora said.

  “Don’t you smoke,” Willis said. “I mean it. You’ve gone fifteen minutes without one, and you know you don’t need it.”

  “I’ll try,” Nora said.

  They said goodbye, and she started to shoulder her way through the crowd. Someone had plugged elevator music into the tape deck. Probably that sap in the kitchen, the oyster shucker her mother had hired. Nora’s hand slid into her pocket and closed around a cigarette.

  “Hey, pretty Nora,” Al Sweet said as she passed by.

  Her spine stiffened as she remembered their last time, facedown on his bed, his weight on her back, his voice insistent and deliberately little-boyish, begging her to let him try it a new way, a slash of pain, Nora’s quick scream. She hurried her pace, jostling a crowd of college kids. Maybe her mother hadn’t left yet. Maybe if Nora explained about Willis, her mother would stay.

  “Where’s Mother?” Nora said to Bonnie. Bonnie, with a pile of menus and a wine list in her hand, was leading a group of six into the dining room.

  “On her way home.”

  “Can you work tonight?” Nora asked right in front of the party of six. “Can you take over for me?”

  Bonnie shook her head. “I can’t. Sean is putting together his science project tonight, and I’ve got to be there.”

  Nora stood still, slightly disoriented. “What’s his project? I’m a science teacher,” she heard one of the customers ask Bonnie. “A papier-mâché ocean basin,” Bonnie explained, leading them to their table. “Seamounts, guyots, and the continental shelf.”

  Standing at the reservations desk, Nora raised the cigarette to her lips. She flicked her lighter and stared at the flame for a few seconds. Glancing at the barroom door, she half expected to see Willis watching her with reproach. She lit the cigarette, took a long drag. She held it between her long fingers, and she stood perfectly still, gazing at her hand for one minute, until Joe Kenneally, Bonnie’s father-in-law, came forward to ask if his table was ready.

  4

  Josie’s sister, Belinda, and her cousin Emma Kenneally wanted her to climb out onto the roof with them, but Josie didn’t want to. She stood in Belinda’s bedroom, turning the Snoopy lamp off and on. Belinda reached through the open window for her. Belinda’s fingers wiggled, and Josie gave her a low-five, laughing.

  Belinda was trying to talk her into it, but Josie kept her head down so she wouldn’t hear her.

  “It’s high up,” Josie said, even though it was only the second story. She remembered once she had followed Belinda to the top of Granddad’s pine tree. She hated when Belinda dared her to do something scary, because Josie didn’t like to disappoint her. She acted very busy, frowning at the Snoopy lamp as if it were broken and her frown could fix it. She held it steady with both hands. After a while Belinda got the message, and her face disappeared from the window.

  Belinda was babysitting for Josie while Cass went grocery shopping. Darcy, Josie’s regular daytime babysitter, never came anymore, because she had to take care of her old mother. Darcy’s mother had been in a nursing home, but she wasn’t happy there. Josie’s own mother had explained this to her. Josie didn’t understand what was so hard about taking care of your mother. But she felt very embarrassed to imagine Darcy’s mother, whom she had met once, in a nursing home, sucking on a plastic bottle or someone’s bosom. Darcy’s mother had gray hair and smoked cigarettes, and Josie would have said she was much too old to be nursing.

  Belinda had her own telephone. It was made of clear plastic, and when it rang or you called someone, all the bells and wires inside would light up. Some were hot pink, some were bright blue, like the lights on the police car that had come the time Josie had run into the street.

  Josie poked her head out the window to see what her sister and cousin were doing. They had forgotten about her; they were putting dark red polish on their fingernails. It smelled evil and poisonous. Josie pulled her head inside.

  She lifted the telephone receiver and dialed some numbers. She waited for a long time. She wondered what it would be like to talk on the telephone. Her mother had told her in case of emergency to dial 911 and start saying her name and address over and over, even if she couldn’t hear the other person, until someone came to help.

  Having the re
ceiver against her ear reminded Josie of hearing tests. Those headphones were always hard and cool, just like this phone. Nothing like the earphones on Belinda’s Walkman, which were too small to completely cover her ears. The scratchy black fabric on them made Josie’s ears itch.

  Sometimes Belinda let Josie try her Walkman, and even though no music came through, Josie wanted one of her own, to wear to school when she was old enough. Speaking into the phone, she pretended she was calling the Walkman place. “I want a red one with blue earphones. I hate black, don’t you? I don’t want the scratchy kind. The smooth kind. Okay? Okay. We have to wear them to school. Don’t forget. Call me back.”

  Cass parked her car in front of the Star Market and waited for Billy. She had planned this carefully. She had asked him to call her at home before heading out to the hardware store, so that she could give him a list of things to pick up at the market. He’d called at four, said he was leaving, and she’d asked him to get milk and bread. Then she had immediately jumped into her car to intercept him.

  But now it was four-thirty, there was no sign of Billy, she had grocery shopping to do, and she had to head home soon. He had taught her to drive in this exact spot. Back then, the parking-lot lights were on a timer. They’d switch off at ten. All their friends would meet up here, then fan out to parties, the beach, the highway to Providence. Then, when they were alone, Billy would slide under Cass into the passenger seat and she would climb behind the wheel.

  With his arm around her, she would circumnavigate the dark lot. Every night the landmarks changed: a lone grocery cart, a discarded tire, the occasional parked Chevy. Vacant cars seemed mysterious and sexy, hinting of married lovers coming to meet in separate cars and going off together in one of them.