The Moon Always Rising

by Alice C. Early

  Since you left me in nowhereland, I was hoping to meet some real men here, but the upperclassmen are nothing but boy-men in varsity sweaters with little dicks and big egos. They hang around our dorm checking out the freshman crop. Droolers. I’m going for a sorority, if only to get away from GF.

  Here’s my address for now. Please, please write. No Daddy to monitor my mail now—unless GF is doing it for him . Just tell me you got this and that you’re OK. If you still love me, tell me that too. I will love you always, always, always.

  Forever your sprite,

  Susie

  Enclosed was a heart-shaped slip of paper with a dorm address at Ohio University.

  November 10, 1978

  My beloved partner in crime,

  Well, it’s the anniversary of the worst day in my life. I’ll never forget that meeting in Traftie’s office—Daddy’s face so red I thought he might have the big one right there and I’ d have his death to be guilty about on top of everything else. I kept willing you, begging you to look at me—I thought it would make me strong if I could just look into your eyes—but you were looking everywhere but at me. I’ve thought a million times what my life might have been if that snot Margie Thompson hadn’t squealed. Just like her to blame it on her Christian morals, but I know it was because she had her own crush on you—can you imagine, that flat-chested, pear-shaped little mouse? I hate her for what she did to us and I told her so, at graduation, in front of her smarmy parents. She called me a slut.

  Enough of old times. I’m a Chi-O now (see new address). I love living in the house and couldn’t wait to get away from GF. Please, please write.

  On the envelope flap was Susan Grant, Chi Omega, and an address on College Street in Athens, Ohio.

  May 26, 1979

  Dear Man of My Dreams,

  I had a dream about you last night. More than a dream—a visitation. We were in the school darkroom and you had those nude photos hung up all over the place. Me, me, me, from every conceivable angle. You made me look so pretty, so ripe. You pulled beauty out of me into the lens, and I felt you were reaching into me and finding something that I didn’t even know was there. Do you remember the incredible sex we had in that red light—you hoisting me up onto the table and me holding onto a pipe above our heads and making it go on forever? I came in my sleep and woke up missing you SO much. I thought maybe you were trying to communicate with me.

  I had this guy in the bed—a gorgeous but totally unimaginative basketball center who’s been chasing me, and I finally said what the hell. I was so hot from the dream I had to shake him awake and do it, slowly, on top the way you like it, and he said I was the best fuck he’d ever had—I guess I have you to thank for that . I wish it would make you jealous that I’m squandering all your lessons on these college clods, but you always said you wouldn’t waste your time being jealous, or on people who are.

  I’m spending the summer in Cincinnati with my sorority sister Nancy Whitman—what a relief not to be home for two months with THEM. If you decide to break your silence between now and August 20th, I’ll be at the address below, and after that back at Chi-O.

  I cut off all my locks—no more Lady Godiva with tresses covering my breasts—and I’m not answering to Susie any more.

  Write to me, PLEASE.

  Susan

  The next—dated June 2, 1982—announced that she had graduated, was taking a parent-funded trip to Europe, and would return to a job as a copy editor in an advertising firm, courtesy of a connection of her father’s. She continued to beg for some word from Jack, at least confirmation that he still lived, but the tone was more distant.

  She wrote on formal personal stationery with the script monogram SGT on December 1, 1983, that she was engaged to Charles Whitman, the cousin of her sorority sister, and that her parents were over the moon about throwing a huge wedding at the club on the following June 25th.

  I almost refused to have it there because of all the memories of us out on that golf course under the stars at all times of year, but I couldn’t exactly tell Daddy why I wasn’t thrilled about the location when Mother had her heart set on that little gazebo with the pink roses. It’s time I accepted that you are dead to me, by your choice, but if I am wrong about that, this is your last chance! Just kidding . . . well, not really.

  She signed it “Fondly always, S.”

  The letter had a P.S.: “I REALLY need the ring back. Daddy’s totally fixated on it now that I’m getting married and (he expects) will produce a male heir—no, I’m not pregnant—yet . I told him I just knew it would turn up when I cleaned out this apartment to move into the grown-up house Chip is buying for us.” She’d enclosed an engagement photo clipped from the Cleveland Plain Dealer of a young woman, more saucy than beautiful, with blond hair and pale eyes, wearing a chaste drape and pearls.

  Els returned the letters to their hiding place, closed the Bible’s scratched cover, and felt its weight on her knees. She gazed at the nudes on the wall—so sensuous, so full of the photographer’s yearning. He had sought to hold Susie’s soul in his lens, to capture the ideal of woman shimmering in his mind’s eye.

  In the study, she aimed the desk lamp at the wall above the daybed—Boney said Jack dubbed it his Pariah Wall—where he’d hung framed rejections for literary submissions. When first setting the study to rights, she’d puzzled over a document typed on browning bond with an embossed school seal and placed high above the others. She stood on the mattress and lifted it down.

  November 15, 1977

  Mr. E. Jackson Griggs

  Simpson 304

  Carrolton Academy

  410 Highland Hills Road

  Cleveland Heights, Ohio

  Dear Jack:

  Per the binding ruling of the Faculty Grievance Committee, I write to confirm that your appeal is denied and your employment at the Academy is terminated.

  I take this step with great personal sadness, as I shall miss you as a colleague in the Department and the students will miss one of their favorite teachers.

  Given the circumstances of your removal, the Chairman of the English Department, Head of the Upper School, and I prefer not to be listed as references for any future employment. However, if there is other assistance I can provide, in friendship, please feel free to call upon me.

  Yours sincerely,

  Trafton S. Williams

  Headmaster

  The signature read “Traft.” Over one corner, Jack had scrawled The Traft Shaft in ink that had faded to gray.

  She rehung the letter and glanced at the other documents. “Poor bugger,” she said, and climbed down and switched off the light.

  When the puppy stood up on Els’s lap, bared her teeth, and started to growl, Els was surprised to hear so threatening a sound coming from so small a creature. She peered into the blackness that had swallowed everything beyond the court, but could see nothing.

  Jack stepped from between the sago palms. Susie’s growl deepened. He was wearing the familiar white shirt and frayed shorts, but he’d aged again. She’d floated a gardenia in a snifter on the table; its scent was so aggressive, she wondered if it had summoned him.

  “I owe you an apology, sweet,” he said.

  Susie sniffed and fell silent but kept staring at him, her hackles bristling.

  “Narcissistic nutter.”

  “I thought my appearance last time was pretty slick, if I do say so,” he said. “But my, well, manifestation of sincerest admiration was never meant to offend you.” He broke off a stalk of lily of the Nile from the copper in the center of the court and set it on the bottom step. “None of us are at our best when drunk.”

  “What di yae want, Jack?”

  He looked at Susie. “Isn’t it nice having a warm body next to you in bed? They say jumbies can take the form of animals. I could circumvent my off-limits promise by inhabiting that adorable creature. Make myself at home at your very breast.”

  “She prefers her box.”

  “I suppose Miss Disci
pline would never encourage the nasty habit of sleeping on the furniture.”

  “She’s already better at understanding boundaries than you.” The puppy gazed up at her with rapt attention. “Why did you name all your dogs Susie?”

  “Easy to remember.”

  “An excuse to say her name, perhaps?” she said. “You went to a lot of trouble to hide those letters. Why desecrate a Bible?”

  He straightened and gathered himself together. Bats, invisible against the dark sky, zoomed in front of his white-clad shape, which appeared to be a bit out of focus, lacking sharp edges between it and the night. “My father went Pentecostal a few years before I left the States. Righteous hypocrite, ruined the Bible for me forever.”

  “She’s the one in your photographs who’s half kitten.”

  “Half vixen, half harlot, all lost,” he said.

  “Those images I enlarged are worshipful.”

  “Her essence reduced to an abstraction, one exquisite curve standing for the whole,” he said. “My best work, never exhibited before now. I swore under oath I’d already destroyed every negative. A condition of my freedom. Such as it was.”

  “Was she the love o’ your life?”

  He paced the court, his hands deep in the pockets of his shorts. “Love, obsession, what you will. She was so supple, so yielding, so eager. The sex was addicting, all the more delicious for being forbidden. But then, I think you know all about that.” He looked out to sea, where the moon cast a band of silver sparkles. When he turned back, he wore an expression of sadness and defeat. “They trumped it up as rape. She went along with them, her father and their fancy lawyer and that milquetoast of a headmaster.” He looked up at the bedroom window. “I’d never do anything with a woman that she didn’t welcome.”

  “She wiz a child.”

  “I’d lay bets you were rolling in the hay with some red-haired swain at that same age.”

  She looked away. “Only fantasizing about it.”

  Susie wriggled and whined. When Els set her down, she started sniffing in circles, so Els carried her down to the grass near the patio. The puppy squatted, then, with a sideways look at Jack, scampered back to Els, who praised her and carried her to the bottom of the steps.

  Jack was only a few feet away. He looked exhausted, ravaged.

  “Taking advantage of one’s student is not on at any age,” she said.

  “She asked me for a passport photo. Daddy was taking the family skiing in the Alps. She showed up with those spectacular boobs stuffed into a fluffy sweater. Then she began stalking me on campus. Sat in the front row of class with her skirt up to here and no panties on. Came to my office on the slimmest of pretexts and stood so close I could smell her shampoo. Apples. She always smelled of apples.”

  “And poor Adam couldn’t resist Eve in an angora sweater.” It’s always beauty’s fault, she thought.

  “It was torture to resist as long as I did.” He stared up at the sky. “I should have burned all her letters unopened.”

  She sat on the bottom step with Susie in her lap. “Was that the whole lot?”

  He began to pace again, slow, wobbly circles. “She wrote every few days, then every week or so for at least a year. Chatter, chatter, chatter. Every detail of her family drama, her pimply boyfriends, like I was her fucking diary. She slacked off eventually. I kept the ones with new addresses.”

  “But left her begging for any sort of reply.”

  “I wrote plenty of them,” he said. “When the mood struck me, I’d tie one on and let ’er rip. Christ, I filled pages with excoriating prose, caustic enough to take the paint off that Jeep. Trotted out a whole dictionary of five-dollar words like ‘vapidity.’” His smile was devilish. “You saw that stuff in the bathtub.”

  “The ravings of a complete nutter,” she said. “What little I could make out of it.”

  “So you see why I never sent them,” he said. “In the cold, semi-sober light of dawn, I didn’t think she was worth the trouble. I only read hers to see if our li-ai-son had had any lasting effect. With me, she glimpsed life’s stunning possibilities, but she tossed it all away. Slid into the unexamined torpor typical of her ilk. Daddy’s little angel, Chip’s little wifey. No reply from me, nasty or not, would have halted her descent once she decided to lie about me.”

  “That ring implies you made promises.”

  “I gave her my great-aunt’s ruby. Worth almost nothing, apart from sentiment. We had a mock wedding on the golf course at midnight. She wore a white gown from the secondhand shop.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “The campus cops probably could have seen it a mile away in that harvest moon, but it turned out one of the girls was up in a tree watching us, that night and others. Our wedding was the beginning of the end. But that’s true for most couples—end of the romantic illusions, start of festering resentments.”

  “Mr. Romantic reveals his cynical soul,” Els said.

  He was looking at the bed of birds of paradise. “She put her hair up in this fancy twist and pinned fake gardenias in it.” His smile was ironic, sad. “She’d worn a gardenia wrist corsage to her junior prom. I was a chaperone. She ditched her date long enough to pull me into the field hockey coach’s office. We did it on a pile of pinnies on the floor. She gripped my head when she came. That flower was right next to my ear. She wasn’t a virgin, if you were wondering.” He looked up toward the lounge windows. “That ring you found was her great-great-grandfather’s—supposed to go to the oldest boy, but she had no brother. She believed it had powers. She gave it to me to spite her father. I was one big rebellion against Daddy, until she realized what it could cost her.”

  “One seldom anticipates the cost of rebellion,” Els said. A dog barked far away. Susie’s ears pricked. In all her wailing and gnashing about why Mallo had been torn from her, she’d barely considered that his loss might be the price of rebelling against Harald. Nor would she have chosen differently had she known then of her father’s deceit and cruelty.

  “I should never have taken that ring,” Jack was saying, “or polluted this place with its evil karma. It’s the cause of a lot of bad stuff.”

  “You cannae blame that lump of stone for any of your ill fortune,” she said. A bat flew so close to her arm she could feel the air it stirred. “And you cannae be expecting me to track down this Mrs. Charles Whitman and return the steamy evidence.”

  “Burn the letters for all I care,” he said. “The ring is bad juju.”

  “Why don’t you just fly up to Cleveland and shove it through her mail slot?”

  “I’d never make it. Probably drop it in the ocean, and that’s as bad as taking it to my goddamn grave.” He looked at the sea for a long time. “Look, just give it to Teal, the solicitor.”

  She shooed Susie off her lap and stood up. One bat flew between her and Jack, then another. Highly personal items the heir would like returned. She looked at him. “You’re not saying you left her this house after all these years.”

  “I assumed Gravy told you her name and you’d pieced it together with that razor sharp brain of yours.”

  “He hid every detail of the heir,” she said. “Except that she was no relation of yours, making me wonder which of your many women she might have been.”

  “She wasn’t first, best, or last,” he said. “Just consequential.”

  “So the fortune I paid for this house went to that wee bitch?”

  “Some of it. A moment ago you were calling her a child.”

  “If she was acting like a woman, I can call her a bitch,” she said. “But bitchy, sexy, needy, none of it gives any man license to swing his dick around.”

  “You can’t beat me up about what I did any more than I’ve already beaten myself up. Just get rid of that damn thing.”

  “Is it what’s holding you here?”

  “And make sure Teal gets proof of delivery,” he said, and dematerialized.

  She picked up Susie and rocked her, wondering if all love was doomed from the start and the love
rs too besotted to notice the warnings.

  She dropped the ring on Teal’s desk. “I believe this is what your heir hoped I’d find.”

  Teal picked it up and examined the engraving. “Just so. She also mentioned some letters.”

  “You said at closing you didn’t have a list.”

  He responded with a tight smile. Through the open windows, the sea wind carried harbor smells of fuel and seaweed, along with curry and fry smoke from the roti trucks serving up lunch beside the destroyed seawall.

  “Jack burned many letters,” she said. “Nothing left but charred fragments.” She pulled from her tote a package wrapped in her hand-painted paper. “Put this in along with the ring,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll find the subject of interest. Kindly send me confirmation that your package has been received. I’ll be relieved to be shut of this burdensome obligation.”

  She stood up, and before Teal could rise from his chair she was out the door and gulping sea air.

  Darkness had fallen an hour ago, but she hadn’t moved from the big chair. Barking furiously, Susie leapt off her stomach and knocked Els’s near-empty rum glass to the floor.

  Els sat up and turned on the Chinese lamp. She grabbed the bandana that served as Susie’s collar, pulled the puppy against her knees, and shouted, “Enough,” and Susie subsided into yelps, then growls, then tense silence. There was no sound but the faint hum of the fridge, the palm fronds rattling, and the faraway barking of dogs.

  Els felt alone, not just in the house but in the world. She gathered Susie into her arms, a talisman against whatever or whomever might be skulking about in the dark outside.

  Jack stepped forward, gradually taking form in the lamplight. “I still can’t get the hang of being a good guest.”

  “Thank God it’s only you,” she said.

  “That feels like a promotion. How quickly the terrifying becomes the merely annoying.” He was fit and spry, in his thirties again. He stopped to admire the photo of Susie-as-sand-dune—her ribs, the intimation of arch to her back, a suggestion of passion. “This one’s my favorite,” he said.