Valley of the Moon
Melanie Gideon
An utterly original, thoughtful and deeply compelling novel for readers who loved ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’.In the heart of the Sonoma Valley, on the edge of a sun-drenched meadow, lies the idyllic community of Greengage – where the residents wear simple clothes, lead quiet lives and whose manners could almost seem to be of another time.Into this world stumbles single mother Lux Lysander, trying to lose herself in the peaceful beauty of the Californian countryside while her young son visits his grandparents. It’s a world far away from the unpaid bills piling up and the overwhelming sense of struggle to make ends meet.Soon, Lux finds herself drawn into the lives of the people of Greengage, discovering not only the secret at the heart of their community but also a sense of belonging she didn’t know she was looking for. Torn between this life and her own with her son back in San Francisco, can Lux turn her back on the only place that has ever truly felt like home?‘Lovingly handcrafted, delectable and transcendent’—San Francisco Chronicle‘Beautifully written . . . a wonderful story about belonging, love and the aching certainty that there’s something more out there. . . . Sure to appeal to fans of Time and Again or The Time Traveler’s Wife’ Shelf Awareness (starred review)‘Captivating’ Booklist
Copyright (#ulink_3542ae52-a4b0-57ea-8da1-1804722133b0)
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in the USA by Ballantine Books, New York 2016
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Copyright © Melanie Gideon 2017
Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photographs © imageBROKER/Alamy Stock Photo (trees) and Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com) (boy and sky)
Melanie Gideon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007425532
Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780007425525
Version: 2017-03-23
Dedication (#ulink_fb257a80-0d8f-5e9f-a2b5-8503c58b4235)
For Sarah and Vasant Gideon
Epigraph (#ulink_1fac50b4-0c96-5590-a254-7cc094312880)
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
—SØREN KIERKEGAARD
Contents
Cover (#u33997fc5-2ba4-5dc1-abbb-14cf24773f04)
Title Page (#u23ebed12-c492-54a4-acd4-a317bbb6b71b)
Copyright (#u1a699e9d-b866-54a5-820c-7a6b41be8343)
Dedication (#u6b3cad8c-6914-5a3e-815e-89d4f214e826)
Epigraph (#ua8956038-d763-5954-bf8f-92d4b60604fc)
Joseph: Valley of the Moon, California. 1906 (#u57224207-688e-5de5-b220-2ca43d1e30ed)
Lux: San Francisco, California. 1975 (#u18a37819-a886-5b07-be85-70e0563c5ced)
Joseph: Valley of the Moon. 1906 (#u256a8f7d-09ce-51fd-ac09-dc385f18245d)
Lux (#u2018d24f-1241-570f-b2cb-ecfcfa3f6ce8)
Joseph (#u1952e135-a46e-5058-8929-346639667dc3)
Lux (#u77170d24-1daf-5201-8c95-73c8f9d9b8e3)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco. 1975 (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph: Valley of the Moon. 1906 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco. 1975–76 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: Valley of the Moon. 1906 (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco. 1978–79 (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph: Valley of the Moon. 1907 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco. 1981 (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph: Valley of the Moon. 1907–8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco. 1981 (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph: Valley of the Moon. 1908 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco. 1982–83 (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph: Valley of the Moon. 1909 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco. 1984 (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph: Valley of the Moon. 1909 (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph: San Francisco. 1984 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco. 1984–86 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: Newport, Rhode Island. 1986 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco. 1987 (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph: Valley of the Moon. 1909 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco. 1987–88 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: Valley of the Moon. 1910 (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux: San Francisco (#litres_trial_promo)
Joseph: Valley of the Moon. 1910–11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Lux (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
A Q&A with Melanie Gideon (#litres_trial_promo)
Book Club Questions (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Melanie Gideon (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
JOSEPH (#ulink_fa3448ca-3672-5cae-ab91-c6be93895801)
Valley of the Moon, California1906 (#ulink_fa3448ca-3672-5cae-ab91-c6be93895801)
The smell of buttered toast was a time machine. I stepped inside it and traveled back to 1871. Back to London. Back to my childhood kitchen, to the lap-bounced, sweets-chunky, much-loved seven-year-old boy I once was, sitting on a stool while Polly and Charlotte flew around me.
Whipping cream. Beating eggs. Chopping parsley and thyme. Oh, their merry gossiping! Their pink cheeks. Nothing scared them, not mice, spiders, nothing. Shoo. All the scary things gone.
“More biscuits, please,” I said, holding out my empty plate.
“No,” said my mother, working the bread dough. She wiped her damp forehead with the heel of her hand. “You’ve had enough.”
If you’d walked into the kitchen at that moment, you’d have had no idea she was the lady of the house, working right alongside the servants. My mother, Imogene Widger Bell, was the only daughter of a knocker-upper. Her father had made his living by rising at three in the morning to knock on the windows of his customers, waking them like a human timepiece. My mother herself had entered service on her twelfth birthday. She was cheerful, hardworking, and smart and ascended quickly through the ranks. From laundry maid to scullery maid. From kitchen maid to under cook. When she was sixteen, she met my father, Edward Bell (the son of the gardener), by a stone wall. She, enjoying a break, the sun beating down upon her face, the smell of apple blossoms in the air, an afternoon of polishing silver in front of her. He, an assistant groundskeeper, coiled tight, knee-deep in brambles, and desperate to rise above his class.
Besotted with my mother, he presented a lighthearted façade to woo her, carefully hiding the anger and bitterness that fueled his ambition. His only mistake as he saw it? To have been born into the wrong family. My mother did not see things that way. Her belly was full every night. She worked alongside honest people. Her employers gave her a bonus at Christmas. What more could one ask?
They were terribly ill matched. They never should have married, but they did. And though it took many years, my father eventually did what he’d set out to do: he made a fortune in textiles. He bought a mansion in Belgravia. He hired staff. A lady’s maid and a cook for my mother. A valet for him. They attended concerts and the opera. They became patrons of the arts. They threw parties, they hosted salons, they acquired Persian rugs for every room.
And in the end, none of it mattered: they remained outsiders in the class that my father had hoped to infiltrate. His new “friends” were polite to his face, but behind his back referred to him as “that vulgar little man.” He’d earned his fortune, it was not passed down to him—they would never forgive him for it. All the bespoke shirts in the world couldn’t hide the fact he was new money.
“Joseph, five minutes and then back upstairs to your schoolwork,” said my mother. “Did you finish your sums?”
“Yes,” I lied.
“No,” said Madeline, the governess, who had appeared in the doorway and was holding out her hand to me. How long had she been standing there?
I groaned and slid off the stool.
“Don’t you want to go to university one day?” asked Madeline.
I should have been in school already. That my mother had convinced my father to allow my sister’s governess to give me lessons at home was a miracle. My father consistently reminded me this would come to an end and I would soon be sent away to a proper school.
If only he knew what really happened at 22 Willoughby Square once he left the house every morning. My mother sailed us out of the sea of oligarchy and into the safe harbor of egalitarianism. We became a community of equals. Titles evaporated. Young Master, Little Miss, Cook, Girl, Mistress, Governess. Poof, gone. Polly, Madeline, even Charlotte, the lowliest kitchen maid, called my mother Imogene.
As a result my education was broad. I was taught not only how to multiply and divide, to read and recite, but how to blacken a stove, how to get candle wax out of a tablecloth, and how to build a fence. Some of the lessons I disliked more than others. Egg gathering, for instance: the chickens terrified me. They’d run after me, pecking at my feet.
“I hate the chickens,” I said to my mother. “Why do you make me go out there?”
“How else will you learn what you love to do?” she said. “You don’t have to like everything, but you must try.”
What my mother loved was greengage plums.
The most sublime-tasting plum in the world, she always said, but the tree had a fickle temperament and was notoriously difficult to grow. She had a small orchard in the back of our garden. I had never tasted one of her greengage plums, or if I had I couldn’t remember. The last time her trees had fruited, I was a baby. Every July I’d ask if this was the year the plums would come.
“You must be patient,” she told me. “Everything good takes time.”
I was a greedy boy. I stamped my foot. I wanted a plum now.
“How to wait,” she said, looking down at me with pity. “It’s the hardest thing to learn.”
I was always waiting for my mother to come home. Most afternoons she left the house to attend one meeting or another. She was devoted to many causes. Education. Women’s rights. Land reform and the struggles of the working class. She made signs. She marched in the streets. Once she even went to jail with a group of her fellow suffragettes. Much aggrieved, my father went to retrieve her, paying the exorbitant two-pound bail to set her free. When they walked in the door, my mother looked shy and triumphant. My father was enraged.
“You’ve made me a laughingstock in front of my friends,” he spat at her.
“They are not your friends,” she said, taking off her gloves.
“You have forgotten your place.”
“And you have forgotten where you came from.”
“That is exactly the point!” he bellowed.
They slept in different bedrooms that night and every night thereafter. My father had done everything he could to erase his history and pull the ladder he’d climbed up behind him. He forbade my mother to join any more organizations. She agreed, and instead began holding meetings at the house while he was at work. In her mind, everybody deserved a better life and it was her responsibility as a woman of means to help them achieve it. Unmarried women with children, spinsters, laundresses, jakesmen, beggars, and drunks all traipsed through our doorway and were led into the parlor to discuss their futures.
When I was eight, my mother left. She told me she was going on a painting trip to Provence. She’d been unable to bring herself to tell me the truth: my father was admitting her to an institution. He did it without her consent. He needed only two signatures to have her committed, his and his lawyer’s. Her diagnosis: unstable due to overwork and the inability to handle domestic responsibilities. She was gone for four months.
She returned fifteen pounds lighter and the color of curdled cream. She used the same light, cheery voice she always had with me, but I wasn’t fooled. There was no joy in it anymore. She spoke as if she were standing on the roof of a building in which somebody had forgotten to build the stairs. She’d fight to sustain eye contact when we spoke, but as soon as we stopped our conversation, her gaze would fall to the floor.
It was Charlotte, the kitchen maid, who finally took pity on me and told me the truth. “Painting, my arse. She got locked up by your father. Sent away to the loony bin.”
I didn’t believe her, but the governess corroborated the story. Polly, the cook, too.
“Don’t tell her you know,” said Polly.
“But what do I do?”
“Treat her exactly the way you’ve always treated her,” she said.
“But—she’s different,” I whined. I wanted my real mother back. The playful, optimistic, bread-making, injustice-fighting, eye-glinting woman who called everybody by their first names no matter what their stations.
“She’ll come back,” said Polly. “You just have to be patient. Sit with her. That’s all you have to do.”
It was easy to sit with my mother. She rarely left the house anymore. Most days, after breakfast and a bath, she retired to the parlor.
“I’ve taken up some lovely new pursuits,” she said. No longer did she work in the kitchen alongside Polly and Charlotte. Instead she sat on the chaise and embroidered, the curtains drawn, the lamp lit, her head bent studiously over her work.
“Shall I read to you?” I asked.
“No, thank you. I prefer the silence.”
“Shall I open the curtains? It’s a beautiful day.”
“I don’t think so. The light is too bright for me.”
“Then I’ll just sit here with you.”
“Wonderful,” she murmured.
I lived on that “wonderful.” A crumb, but I swallowed it down, pretending it was a four-course meal.
She would come back. Polly said she would. I just had to be patient.
Over the next year she stopped leaving the house altogether. Twilights were especially difficult. Once my mother was a sunflower, her petals spread open to the sky. Now, one by one, her seeds fell out of their pod.
It was a cold day in November that she told me she would be wintering in Spain. She’d developed arthritis, she said. A warmer climate would suit her.
I’d overheard my father talking to his lawyer, making the arrangements, so I knew she was lying—he was sending her back to the asylum. He’d institutionalized her because he wanted an obedient wife who was satisfied living a quiet, domestic life. Instead she’d been returned to him a ghost. He didn’t know what else to do.
I didn’t know what to do either, but even though I was only nine, I knew locking her away again was not the solution. I threw my arms around her and begged her not to go.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have a choice.” She looked down at me as if I were an inanimate object—a book or a shawl.
“You’re lying. You’re not going to Spain.”
“Don’t be silly, of course I am.” She pushed me away. “And you’re far too old to be acting this way.”
“Mama,” I whimpered.
For a split second her expression softened and I saw my old mother gazing back at me with empathy and love. But a moment later the light drained out of her eyes.
“Take care of your sister,” she said.
“You must run away,” I cried, desperate. “Someplace he won’t be able to find you. Leave tonight.”
She pursed her lips. “And where would I go?”
“Anywhere.”
“There is nowhere else,” she said.
I wept silently.
A week later, the night before she was due to leave, her bags already packed, my mother lay down on her bed in a long dress like the Lady of Shalott, drank an entire bottle of nervine, and took her last breath. In an instant everything changed. Polly became Cook. Charlotte became Cook’s Girl. Madeline became Governess. I reverted back to Young Master; my sister, Little Miss. And my father packed me off to boarding school.
I would never see the greengage trees fruit again.
My toast had grown hard. The butter congealed. The consequences of time travel.
“A girl,” reported Martha, walking into the kitchen. “Ridiculously long lashes. Dark hair. Looks just like her mother.”
My American wife was an herbalist and midwife, as were her mother and grandmother before her. She carried soiled linens into the scullery.
“Are they still planning on leaving?”
“I assume so.”
“Did you ask them?”
“No, I didn’t ask them, Joseph. I was in the middle of delivering a baby. And it was a breech, at that.” She lowered the sheets carefully into the copper. “Thank you for filling it.”
Getting the water was my job. The scrubbing of the stains out of the linens was hers. I was progressive in all matters, including women’s suffrage, but I had my limits.
She stirred the sheets with a wooden spoon and sighed. “I’m sure they haven’t changed their minds.”
Greengage had lost more than a few families in the past year. I suspected it came down to the siren call of modernity. Electric lights. Steamships. The cinema. They were afraid of missing out.
When Kathleen O’Leary was a few months along, her husband, Paddy, had let me know they were moving back to Ireland.
“You understand,” he said to me in his thick brogue. “We’re not from here. We must stop our fooling around and go home. If we stay any longer, we’ll never leave.”
As if Greengage had been nothing but a holiday.
Martha was a tiny thing. When I was sitting, we were practically the same height. She put her cheek next to mine. She smelled of lavender soap. Soon she’d also smell of the chicken fat she used to moisturize her red, chapped hands.
“There isn’t anything you can do about it,” she said. “Greengage is your dream, Joseph. It’s not everybody’s dream. You have to remember that. Besides, maybe they’ll come back.”
“This optimism is quite out of character for you.”
“Yes,” she mused. “There’s something about a birth. One can’t help but be hopeful.”
After boarding school, I had attended Pembroke College at Cambridge, where I’d graduated with a dual degree in classics and economics. Then my father insisted I embark upon a Grand Tour. I thought it an antiquated rite of passage, but he thought it a necessary rounding out of my education. How he prized worldliness! He wouldn’t be able to pass as gentry, but damn it, his son would.
I traveled to France, Italy, and Germany. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland. I was supposed to go back to London then, to officially join Bell Textiles as my father’s second-in-command; instead I dropped down into Turkey and then made my way to Egypt. From there I went to the Far East, and after that, to Russia. I finished in Greece, spending a few weeks in Athens before finally returning to England.
I was gone for over a year. It took me that long to realize how depressed I was at the idea of my future—sitting in a glass room looking down at the unlucky souls on the factory floor. The women spinning and operating the looms. The men weaving and carding. The boys sweeping the floor, dust and lint choking the air. My father’s employees labored twelve hours a day, six days a week, amidst deafening noise for paltry wages. And why was I sitting in that glass room rather than on the floor? Not because of hard work, but because I’d been born into the right family.
This was not the life I wanted.
I couldn’t stop thinking of those shimmering days before my father sent my mother away. The world she created. Between the hours of eight and seven, the household hummed and buzzed joyfully. No job was valued more than another. There were no delineations between rich or poor. To be useful, to do good work with people that you respected, that’s what was important. But that world did not exist anymore.
I’d have to go out and create it.
It was in June of 1889 that I stepped off the train in Glen Ellen, California, steam curling around my ankles, the smell of fate in the air. I took a deep breath. A perfume of mountain laurel, ripening grapes, and chaparral danced on the breeze, deepened with a base note of sun-baked rocks and ferns.
My requirements for our new home? Close to a train—there were two train lines that ran through Glen Ellen. Near a large city—Santa Rosa and San Francisco were not more than a few hours away. Arable land—the hills were veined with springs.
I was enchanted as soon as I stepped off the train. As were the hundreds of others who got off the train with me who were now in the process of climbing into buggies and wagons, en route to the dozens of resorts, enclaves, and tent campgrounds in the area, where they would soak up the sun, get drunk on Cabernet, swim and picnic in the druidy redwood groves while reciting Shakespeare.
I climbed into a wagon and was driven off by a Mr. Lars Magnusson to view the old Olson farm. We traveled a mile or so into the hills, past oak glens, brooks, and pools of water, past manzanitas, madrones, and trees dripping with Spanish moss. Sonoma Mountain was to the west; its shadow cast everything in a soft purple light. When we finally reached the farm and I saw the luscious valley spread out in front of me, I knew this was it. Greengage. It would be a home for me and Martha at first, but I hoped it would soon be something more. A tribute to my mother and her ideals; a community in which she would have flourished, where she would have lived a good long life.
Greengage. The burbling creek that ran smack down the middle of the property. The prune, apple, and almond orchards: the fields of wheat, potatoes, and melons. The pastures for cows and sheep. The chicken house and pigsty. The gentle, sloping hills, mounds that looked like God’s knuckles, where I would one day plant a vineyard. I was done with fancy trappings, done with servants, with balls and hunts, with titles, with soot, with my Cambridge pals, the stench of the city streets, with war. I was about to cast off my old life like a tatty winter coat.
“Did you know the Olsons?” I asked Magnusson.
“We emigrated from Uppsala in Sweden together.”
“Why are they selling?”
“Dead.”
“Dead? Of what, may I ask?”
“Husband, diphtheria; wife, scarlet fever.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“One right after the other.”
“Really?” My mouth twitched in sympathy. “How difficult that must have been for you.”
Magnusson scowled. Compassion from a Brit was both an unexpected and unwelcome intrusion. “You plan to use this farm for a commune?”
“A commune? Who told you that?”
“Jake Poppe. The proprietor of the general store.”
“No. He is mistaken. It will be just me and my wife. At first,” I added, not wanting to mislead him. There were already twelve people waiting to join us. Three farmers and their wives, four children, a carpenter, and a stonemason.
“You will need help. It’s a large property,” he said.
“I’ll get help.”
“You will pay well?”
“Yes.” And I would pay for everything to get the farm up and running, but hopefully it would eventually pay for itself. That was my plan.
“Look, what is your price?” I asked, unwilling to reveal anything more to him.
Magnusson stared stonily down into the valley as if I hadn’t spoken. I couldn’t have guessed that this gruff, withholding Swede would not only join my endeavor but eventually become my indispensable right-hand man.
“Five thousand dollars,” I blurted out. “That’s more than fair. Fifty dollars an acre.”
In a matter of weeks, on my twenty-fifth birthday, I would come into my full inheritance, and that would fund not only the purchase but all the other initial costs. My father would not be pleased. I would rarely speak to him again once he heard of my cockamamie plan.
Five thousand dollars was a fair price. The farm had gone to seed; it would take a lot of work to bring it back. Magnusson snapped the reins, growled ja, and just like that I was the proud owner of one hundred acres of the promised land.
Within a few years Greengage was well under way. Word quickly spread of the farm in the Valley of the Moon where residents would not only be given a fair wage (men and women paid equally no matter what the job) but share in the eventual profits.
Was I a dreamer? Yes. Was it a foolishly naïve scheme? Possibly. But I was certain others would join me on this grand adventure, and it turned out I was right.
Our numbers rapidly increased. We built cottages for families and dormitories for single men and women. We erected a schoolhouse and a workshop. We repaired the chicken coop and the grain silo. The jewel in the crown, however, was the dining hall. The hub of the community, I spared no expense there. In the kitchen there were three iceboxes, two enormous Dutch stoves, and a slate sink the size of a bathtub. The dining room was a bright and cheery place: southern exposure, redwood floors, and five long trestle tables. Greengage was still small back then, only a few tables full at mealtimes, but I hoped one day every seat at every table would be taken.
“Please don’t tell anybody about the O’Learys leaving,” I said to Martha.
“No goodbye party? You just want them to sneak out in the middle of the night like thieves?”
That’s exactly what I wanted. Leaving was contagious. In 1900, we’d had nearly four hundred people living at Greengage Farm. Now, in 1906, we were just under three hundred.
“They deserve a proper goodbye.”
“A small party,” I conceded. “Let’s have it here, rather than the dining hall.”
“No,” said Martha, putting an end to the conversation. “It will be in the dining hall just like all the rest of the parties.”
After she went back upstairs, I pulled a small tablet out of my breast pocket. In it, I kept a roster. I found the O’Learys’ names and put lines through them with a pencil. I would just have to look for a new family to replace them.
The O’Learys left on a beautiful day in April. I’d gone to their cottage before the party I couldn’t bring myself to attend, said my goodbyes, then made my excuses. An upset stomach. I said I was going off to the infirmary in search of an antacid. Instead I climbed up into the hills.
A hawk circled above my head. I soothed myself by looking down upon Greengage, which looked particularly Edenic that morning, bathed as it was in the late morning sun. All was as it should be. The hens were fat and laying eggs. Sheep grazed in the pastures and bees collected nectar.
I could see Matteo Sala working in the vineyard. He leaned back on his shovel and wiped his brow with a hankie. He came from a family of Umbrian vintners and was doing what he was born to do—what made him happy and fulfilled. That was the entire point of Greengage. Why would anybody want to live anywhere else?
The bell gonged, announcing the start of the party. People walked toward the dining hall. Fathers carried their children on their shoulders. Women strolled arm in arm. What was on the menu? Butter and cheese and apples. Mutton stew. Lemonade and beer. The smell of freshly baked sponge cake was in the air.
I’d worked hard over the years, carefully cultivating relationships outside of Greengage, gaining a solid reputation as a fair and honest businessman. We sold much of what we grew to restaurants in San Francisco and Glen Ellen. It wasn’t difficult. Our produce was magnificent. When asked how we did it, I talked about nitrogen-rich cover crops, compost, some of the traditional Chinese farming methods that we employed. I didn’t tell them our secret: contentment. We were a happy lot.
“Joseph!” called a woman’s voice from down in the valley.
My sister, Fancy, had caught sight of me. Now I was doomed. I would have to attend the party.
“Get down here, you cranky old man!” she shouted.
She stood in the meadow surrounded by a group of children who all craned their heads up and began shrieking for me as well. My heart filled at the sound of their voices.
If only I’d brought my camera. I was not a sentimentalist, but I would have liked to have captured that moment. To freeze time in my lens. To be able to gaze back at the image of the party just beginning. To remember precisely how it felt when the pitchers of lemonade were full. When the cake had not yet been cut, and the afternoon stretched out in front of us.
Early the next morning, before dawn, I went outside to relieve myself. As I was walking back into the house, the floor began to shake. A temblor. I froze in the foyer, waiting for it to stop. It did not.
Martha shouted from upstairs. “Joseph!”
“Come down!” I yelled. “It’s an earthquake!”
Martha appeared at the top of the stairs in her nightgown, her eyes wide. The staircase rattled, the banister undulated.
“Hurry!” I held out my hand as she ran down the stairs. I threw open the front door and we stumbled into the yard. The full moon was a bone-white orb in the sky.
The sounds that followed next could only be described thus: a subterranean clap of thunder, an ancient sequoia splitting in two, a volley of bullets, the roaring of a train coming into the station. A preternatural whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, a lasso spinning through the air.
We’d been through many earthquakes and I knew one thing for certain. Never had there been one like this.
It was April 18, 5:12 A.M. We clung to each other on the front lawn and waited for the shaking to stop.
When we walked back into the house, Martha gasped. Nothing had been disturbed. No painting had fallen off the wall, no porcelain jug had bounced off a counter. No books had slid out of a bookshelf. No brick had cracked in the chimney. Everything looked just as it had before. It was incomprehensible. In every earthquake, no matter how minor, we’d sustained some damage. This temblor was clearly a monster and yet …
“Quickly,” said Martha. “We must see how the others have fared.”
We all knew the emergency drill. Fire or quake—congregate at the dining hall.
The sky slowly brightened, from indigo to a robin’s-egg blue. We walked through Greengage in a state of disbelief. No trees were downed. No chasm rent a field in two. The schoolhouse, the cottages, the dormitories, the winery, the barn, the cooper’s shed, the workshop, every structure was intact.
Martha, who rarely showed her affection for me in public, picked up my hand and threaded her fingers through mine. It was not a romantic gesture. It did not make me feel like we were husband and wife. Instead it stripped me of my years and made me feel as if we were two orphan children wandering through a vast forest.
You might think our behavior odd. Why weren’t we rejoicing? Clearly we’d been spared. But I was a realist, as was Martha.
Something was very wrong.
Everybody was present and accounted for, and there wasn’t so much as a single scratch or a scraped knee. If there were wounds, they were not the visible sort.
The only thing that was different was the towering bank of fog that hung at the edge of the woods.
“Glen Ellen,” Magnusson reminded us.
“Yes,” said Martha. “Of course, our friends in Glen Ellen.” She clapped her hands together and shouted out to the crowd. “We can’t assume they’ve been as fortunate as us. We must go to them.”
I stopped a moment to admire my spitfire of a wife. Barely five feet tall, maybe ninety pounds. Butter-yellow hair, which was loose around her shoulders, as the earthquake had interrupted her in mid-sleep. Martha was not a woman who traded on her beauty. It shone through, even though she eschewed lipstick and rouge and wore the plainest of serge skirts. I felt a sharp prick of pride.
It took us nearly an hour to organize a group of men and a wagon full of supplies.
“Be careful,” said Martha nervously as I climbed up on my horse. “There could be more aftershocks.”
“The worst is over,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t like the look of that fog,” she said. “It’s so thick.”
It was a tule fog, the densest of the many Northern California fogs. When a tule fog descended upon Greengage, spirits plummeted, for it heralded day after day of unremitting mist and drizzle. But these fogs were vital to the vineyard as well as the fruit and nut trees. Without them the trees didn’t go into the period of dormancy that was needed to ensure a good crop.
“I know the way to Glen Ellen. I could get there blindfolded.” I smiled brightly in order to allay her fears. “We’ll be back before you know it.”
Within seconds of entering the fogbank, I fell off my horse, gasping for air. Disoriented, confused, my chest pounding. A profound, fatal breathlessness.
The two men who had gone before me were already dead.
I was lucky. Magnusson pulled me out before I succumbed to the same fate. Friar, our doctor, came running. He later told me that when he felt my pulse, my heart was beating almost four hundred times a minute. Another few seconds in the fog, and I would have died, too.
In my experience, when the unthinkable happens, people respond in one of two ways: they either become hysterical or are paralyzed. Greengage’s reaction was split down the middle. Some panicked and screams of anguish filled the air; others were mute with shock. Only a minute ago we’d ridden into the fog, as we’d done hundreds of times before. And now, a minute later, two of our men, husbands and fathers both, were dead. How could this be?
I preferred the wails; the silence was smothering. People covered their mouths with their hands, looking to me for answers. I had none. I was as shocked and horrified as anybody else. The only thing I could tell them was that this was no ordinary tule fog.
We put our questions on hold as we tended to our dead. The two men had been stalwart members of our community, with me since the beginning. A dairyman and a builder of stone walls.
Magnusson tossed a spadeful of dirt over his shoulder.
“Let me help,” I said to him, feeling a frantic need to do something.
“No. You are not well.”
“Give the shovel to me, I’m fine,” I insisted.
Nardo, Matteo’s sixteen-year-old son, took the shovel from Magnusson. “You’re not fine,” he told me. “You’re the color of a hard-boiled egg.”
He was right. Whatever had happened in the fog had left me utterly exhausted, and my rib cage ached. It hurt to breathe.
“Thank you,” I said.
The boy bent to his grim task. Digging the graves.
That afternoon, time sped by. It careened and galloped. The men were buried one after the other. People stood and spoke in their honor. People sank to their knees and wept. Grief rolled in, sudden and high, like a tide.
Then it was evening.
I lay in bed unable to sleep. I felt hollow, my insides scraped out. I sought refuge in my mind. I turned the question of this mysterious fog over and over again. Maybe we were mistaken—perhaps the fog was not a fog, it was something else. Had the massive temblor released some sort of a toxic natural gas that came deep from the belly of the earth? If it was a gas, it would dissipate. The wind would eventually carry it away. By tomorrow morning, hopefully.
During breakfast in the dining hall, I relayed my theory. The gas was still there, as dense as it had been yesterday, though it didn’t appear to be spreading. There was a little niggling thought in the back of my mind. If it was a gas, wouldn’t it also emit some sort of a chemical, sulfurous odor?
I divided us into groups. One group set off to investigate the wall of gas further. Where did it start? Where did it end? Probably it didn’t encircle all of Greengage, but if it did, were there places where it wasn’t as dense? Places where somebody fleet of foot might be able to dart through without suffering its ill effects?
Another group conducted experiments. The gas had to be tested. Was there any living thing that could pass through it? The children helped with this task. They put ants in matchboxes. Frogs in cigar boxes. They secured the boxes to pull-toys, wagons, and hoops. They attached ropes to the toys and sent them wheeling into the gas.
The ants died. The frogs died. We sent in a chicken, a pig, and a sheep. They all died, too. The wall encircled the entirety of Greengage, all one hundred acres of it, every square foot of it as dense as the next. Whatever it was made of, it did not lift. Not the next morning. Or the morning after that.
The first week was the week of unremitting questioning. Wild swings of emotion. Seesawing. The giving of hope, the taking of hope.
Was it a gas? Was it a fog? Why had this happened? What was happening on the other side of it? Were people looking for us? Surely there’d be a search party. Surely somebody was trying to figure out how to get through the fog and come to our aid.
The second week was the week of anger. Bitter arguments and grief.
Why had this happened to us? What had we done to deserve this? Were we being punished? Why hadn’t any rescuers arrived yet? Why was it taking so long?
People grew desperate.
Late one night, when everybody was asleep, Dominic Salvatore tiptoed into the fog, hoping if he moved slowly enough, he would somehow make it through. He got just five feet before collapsing.
We lost an entire family not two days later. Just before dawn, they hitched their fastest horse to their buckboard, hid under blankets, and tried to race their way through the fogbank. The baker was the only one awake at that hour. The only one who heard the sound of their wagon crashing into a tree. The horse’s terrified whinny. The cries of the children. And then, silence.
After that, nobody tried to escape again.
The third week, the truth of our situation slowly set in. Meals at the dining hall were silent. Appetites low. Food was pushed away after one or two bites. Everybody did their jobs. What else could we do? Work was our religion, but it also produced our sustenance. It gave us purpose. It was the only thing that could save us. The cows were milked. Fields plowed. Everybody thought the same thing but nobody would voice it. Not yet, anyway.
Help wasn’t coming. We were on our own.
LUX (#ulink_59f0cc26-2f0b-58ef-8023-ae78cc67871b)
San Francisco, California1975 (#ulink_59f0cc26-2f0b-58ef-8023-ae78cc67871b)
I sat in the passenger seat holding a squirmy Benno on my lap. He had a ring of orange Hi-C around his mouth. I’d have to scrub it off before he got on the plane; it made him look like a street urchin. He sucked on the ear of his stuffed Snoopy while his sticky hand worked the radio dial.
He spun past “Bennie and the Jets” and “Kung Fu Fighting.”
“But you love ‘Kung Fu Fighting,’” I said.
He vehemently shook his head and Rhonda laughed, her Afro bobbing. An X-ray technician at Kaiser, she’d left work early to drive us to the airport and help me see Benno off. We’d been roommates for the past three years, and she was the closest thing I had to family in California. Right now she seemed to be the only person in my life who wasn’t keeping a constant tally of my failures (perennially late everywhere I went, maxed-out credit cards, beans and toast for dinner three times a week, musty towels, and an ant infestation in my closet due to the fact that Benno had left half an uneaten hot dog in there that I didn’t discover for days).
Benno stopped turning the dial when he heard whistling and drumming, the opening instrumentals for “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero.” He nestled back into my chest. Within a minute, his eyes were welling up as the soldiers were trapped on a hillside. He moaned.
“Change the station,” said Rhonda.
“No!” shouted Benno. “The best part’s coming. The sergeant needs a volunteer to ride out.” Tears streamed down his face as he sang along.
“God help us,” I mouthed to Rhonda.
“Babe, is this a good cry or a bad cry?” I whispered to Benno.
“G-good,” he stuttered.
“Okay.” I wrapped my arms around him and let him do his thing.
Benno loved to feel sad, as long as it wasn’t a get-a-shot-at-the-doctor kind of sad. He loved, in fact, to feel. Anything. Everything. But this kind of emotion, happy-sad, as he called it, was his favorite flavor. Tonight I would indulge him. We wouldn’t see each other for two weeks.
Rhonda took one last drag of her cigarette and flicked the butt out the window. She was no stranger to this kind of melodrama. The song ended and Benno turned around, fastened himself to my chest like a monkey, and buried his head in my armpit.
I stroked his back until he stopped trembling. He looked up at me with a tear-streaked face.
“Better?” I asked.
He nodded and ran his finger across the faint blond down on my upper lip. He made a chirping sound. My mustache reminded him of a baby chick, he’d once told me. I told him you should never refer to a lady’s down as a mustache.
I’d given Benno my mother’s maiden name—Bennett. I loved the clean, bellish sound of it. She’d flown out for his birth; my father had not. At that point he and I had been estranged for more than two years, and my choice to have a son “out of wedlock” was not going to remedy that situation.
My mother, Miriam, had been campaigning for Benno to come east for a visit for months. I’d said no originally. The thought of shipping Benno across the country to my hometown of Newport, Rhode Island, land of whale belts, Vanderbilt mansions, and men in pink Bermuda shorts, was unthinkable.
“Please,” she said. “He needs to know where he comes from.”
“He comes from San Francisco.”
“He barely knows me.”
“You visit three times a year.”
“That’s not nearly enough.”
She upped the ante. She promised to pay for everything. The airfare, the escort who would accompany him on the plane. Finally I relented.
I’d met Nelson King, Benno’s father, in a bar a week before he shipped out to Vietnam.
“You’re not from here” was the first thing he said to me.
I’d been in San Francisco a little over a year at that point and thought I was doing a pretty good job of passing as a native. I’d worked hard to shed my New England accent. I’d traded in my preppy clothes for Haight-Ashbury garb. The night we met, I was wearing a midriff-baring crocheted halter top with white bell-bottom pants.
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“You hold yourself differently than everybody else.”
“What do you mean? Hold myself how?”
He shrugged. “Stiffer. More erect.”
I puffed out my cheeks in irritation. He was an undeniably good-looking man. Pillowy raspberry lips. Luminous topaz skin. He could be anything. Persian. Egyptian. Spanish. Later I’d learn his mother was black, his father Puerto Rican.
“That wasn’t an insult,” he said. “That was a compliment. You hold yourself like somebody who knows their worth.”
I was nineteen, in between waitressing jobs, and desperately searching for an identity. That he saw this glimmer of pride in me was a tiny miracle. We spent every day together until he shipped out. It wasn’t love, but it might have blossomed into that if we’d had more time together.
After he’d left, I’d written him a few letters. He’d written back to me as well, echoing my light tone, but then we’d trailed off. Three months later, when I’d found out I was pregnant, I’d written to him again, but didn’t get a reply. Soon after, I discovered his name on a fatal casualty list in the San Francisco Examiner.
Although his death was tragic and shocking, the cavalier nature of our relationship and that it had resulted in an unexpected pregnancy was just as jarring. We’d essentially had a fling, a last hurrah that had allowed for a sort of supercharged intimacy between us. A quick stripping down of emotions that I imagined was not unlike the relationship he might have had with his fellow soldiers. The details of our lives didn’t matter and so we’d exchanged very little of them. We’d just let the moment carry us—to bars, to restaurants, and to bed.
In an instant, the dozens of possible futures I’d entertained for myself receded and the one future I’d never considered rolled in.
I was pregnant, unmarried, and alone.
“What do I call the man?” asked Benno as Rhonda pulled into the airport parking garage.
“What man?”
“The man who lives with Grandma.”
“The man who lives with Grandma will be away when you visit,” I said.
The man who lived with Grandma, a.k.a. my father, George Lysander, would be spending the last two weeks of August at his cabin in New Hampshire, as he’d done for the last forty-something years. My mother had timed Benno’s visit accordingly.
“I met him before,” said Benno.
“You were only two, Benno. Do you really remember meeting him?”
“I remember,” he insisted.
My father had been in San Francisco for the Association of Independent Schools’ annual conference (he was dean of admissions at St. Paul’s School in Newport). He’d arranged to stop by our apartment for dinner: it would be the first time he’d met his grandson.
“For you,” he’d said to Benno, handing him a loaf of sourdough bread.
Benno peeked out from behind me, his thumb in his mouth.
“Say thank you to your grandfather,” I prompted him.
“He doesn’t have to thank me,” said my father.
“Yuck crunchy bread,” said Benno.
I watched my father taking Benno in. His tea-colored skin. His glittering, light brown eyes.
“I don’t like it either,” my father said. “How about we have your mother cut off the crusts?”
Benno nodded.
“We can make bread balls.”
It was an offering to me. Bread balls were something my father and I did together when I was a little girl. Plucked the white part of the bread out of the loaf and rolled tiny little balls that we dipped in butter and salt and then popped into our mouths. It drove my mother crazy.
That was all it took. Benno adored my father. He climbed into his lap after dinner and made him read The Snowy Day three times. I washed the dishes and fought back tears of relief and resentment. Why had it taken him so long to come around?
But he hadn’t—not really. When Benno was standing in front of him in the same room, he came around. But when he was three thousand miles away from us, back home in Newport, the distance grew again. His contact with Benno dwindled to a once-a-year birthday card. The incongruity between our realities, the life I’d chosen and the life he’d wanted for me, was too great to reconcile.
“What if he’s there?” asked Benno.
“He won’t be.”
“But what if he is? What do I call him?”
“Then you call him Grandpa,” I said. “Or Grandfather. Or Mr. Lysander. Or George. Christ, Benno, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him what he wants to be called, but I don’t think it’ll be an issue. You won’t see him.”
My father had never missed his precious two weeks at the lake. He would not be missing them now.
I hated airports. They were liminal space. You floated around in them untethered between arrivals and departures. A certain slackness always descended upon me as soon as I walked through the airport doors.
“Are you scared?” I asked Benno.
“There’s nothing to be scared of, kid,” said Rhonda. “You’re going on an adventure.”
“I’m not scared,” he said.
“Look, babe. The days will be easy. It’s the nighttime that might be hard. That’s when you’ll probably feel homesick. But just make sure you—”
“Can we go up the escalator?” he interrupted me.
I stopped and crouched down. “Benno, do you need a hug?”
He blew a tiny spit bubble. “No, thank you.”
“Don’t do that, that’s gross.”
He sucked it in.
“Well, may I please have a hug?” I asked.
“I’m busy.”
“You’re busy? Busy doing what?”
“Leaving, Mama,” he sighed.
Abortion wouldn’t be legal in California for another three years, but even if it were, I never would have terminated the pregnancy. Perhaps given different circumstances I’d have chosen differently, but for this baby my choice was life. Of course I didn’t know he’d turn into Benno. My Benno. I just knew he needed to come into the world.
Everybody thought I was crazy. Not only was there no father in the picture, but the father was black. How much harder could I make it for myself—a single white mother with a mixed-race child?
He brought me such joy. I never knew I was capable of loving somebody the way I loved him. Purely, ragged-heartedly. I couldn’t imagine my life without him in it.
But my life with him in it was also ridiculously hard. I was a parent twenty-four hours a day. Every tantrum, every cry of hunger, every question was mine to soothe, to feed, and to answer. I had no spouse to hand him off to. No partner to help pay the bills. I could never just walk away. I was the sole person in charge of resolving every issue in my child’s life, from how to deal with bullies, to Is that rash serious? to He’s three years old and still not using a spoon properly—what’s wrong with him?
I wasn’t stupid. I’d known that raising a child on my own would be challenging. It was the isolation that blindsided me. The intractable, relentless truth was that I was alone. I could meet other mothers on the playground. We could talk bottle-feeding and solid foods, how to get rid of cradle cap, the best remedy for diaper rash. We could laugh, commiserate, watch each other’s babies while somebody ran to the bathroom. But at the end of the day, they went home to their husbands and I went home to an apartment that was dark until I turned on the lights.
When we got to the gate, I was panicked but doing my best to hide it. I’d never been separated from Benno for more than a night.
“You must be Benno,” said the stewardess when we checked in. “We’ve been waiting for you!” She picked up the phone, punched three numbers, and spoke softly into it. “Jill, Benno Lysander is here.” She hung up. “You are going to adore Jill. She’s a retired stewardess. She’s got all sorts of activities planned for you, young man. Crossword puzzles. Hangman. Coloring books. A trip to the cockpit to meet the captain, and if you’re very good, maybe you’ll get a pair of captain’s wings.”
Benno’s eyes gleamed. I was on the verge of tears.
“Stop it,” Rhonda whispered. “He’s happy. Don’t screw this up.” She pulled her camera out of her pocketbook. “Let’s get a Polaroid of the two of you before you go.”
Five minutes later Benno was gone.
We walked out of the airport silently. Rhonda waved the Polaroid back and forth, drying it. When we got to the car, she handed me the photo.
I’d forgotten to wash Benno’s face. His mouth was still rimmed with orange.
Later, back at our apartment, Rhonda poured me a shot of Jack. Then she looked at my face and poured me a double. “It’s only two weeks,” she said.
I pounded the whiskey in one swallow. “What was I thinking? He’s a baby.”
“He’s an old soul. He’s a forty-year-old in a five-year-old body. He’ll be fine. Give me that glass.”
I slid it across the table and she poured herself a splash.
“I forbid you to go in his room and sniff his clothes,” she said.
“I would never do that,” I said.
“Hmm.” She took a dainty sip of the whiskey.
Elegant was the word that best described Rhonda Washington. Long-necked, long-legged. An Oakland native, Rhonda had five siblings. All of them had R names: Rhonda, Rita, Raelee, Richie, Russell, and Rodney. Rhonda’s mother said it was easier that way. All she had to do was stick her head out the window and yell “Ruh” and all the kids would come running.
“Now, what’s your plan? You aren’t just going to sit around the house moping,” she said.
“I’ve got this week off, then I’m working double shifts all next week.” I waitressed at Seven Hills, an Irish pub in North Beach.
“So what are you going to do this week?”
“I’m going camping.”
“Camping?” said Rhonda. “Like, car camping? With a bathroom and showers?”
“No, middle-of-nowhere camping, with a flashlight and beef jerky.”
I’d given a lot of thought as to how I was going to spend my first week of freedom in five years. I let myself fantasize. What if I could do whatever I wanted, no matter the cost? Where would I go? How about Paris? No, too snooty. Australia, then; Aussies were supposed to be friendly. Oh, but I’d always dreamed of seeing the Great Wall. And what about the Greek islands? Stonehenge? The Taj Mahal? Pompeii? I pored through old National Geographics—I rarely let myself dream anymore. My list quickly grew to over fifty places.
In the end I decided on camping right near home. Yes, it was all I could afford, but I wasn’t settling; before I’d had Benno it had been my escape of choice. I’d been to Yosemite, Big Sur, and Carmel. Closer to home, I’d camped on Mount Tam, at Point Reyes, and in the Marin Headlands. If I was depressed, angry, or worried, I headed for the hills. If I didn’t get a regular dose of nature (a walk in Golden Gate Park didn’t count), I wasn’t right. I needed to get away from the city. Sit by myself under a tree for hours. Fall asleep to the sounds of an owl hooting rather than the heavy footfalls of my upstairs neighbors. I was competent in the wilderness. Nothing frightened me. I wanted to feel that part of myself again.
Rhonda tossed her head. “Okay, nature girl.”
“What? I am a nature girl.”
“Using Herbal Essence does not make you a nature girl, Lux. When’s the last time you went camping?”
“A few months before Benno was born.”
“Do you still remember how?”
“You don’t forget how to sleep in a tent, Rhonda.”
“This just seems impulsive. Is it safe to go alone?”
“Yes, Rhonda, it is. I can take care of myself. I know how to do this.” My father was an Eagle Scout. He taught me everything he knew.
“Fine. Why don’t we make a list of what you’ll need.”
“I already have a list.”
I knew what Rhonda was thinking. Here goes Lux again, just throwing things together and hoping for the best. That was how I lived my daily life, from hour to hour, paycheck to paycheck. This was the only Lux she knew. I wanted to show her another side of me.
“I’ve been planning this for months, you know,” I said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well—good,” she said. “Good for you.”
I walked around the table and threw my arms around her. “Admit it. You love me.”
“No.”
“Yes. You love me. Silly, flighty me.”
Rhonda tried to squirm out of my grasp, but she grinned. “Don’t ask me to come rescue you if you get lost.”
“I won’t.”
“And don’t take my peanut butter. Buy your own.”
“Okay.”
I’d already packed her peanut butter.
I did go into Benno’s room at midnight. I did lie down on his bed and bury my face in his pillow and inhale his sweet boy scent. I fell asleep in five minutes.
Rose Bennedeti and Doro Balakian were my landlords, the owners of 428 Elizabeth Street, a shabby (“in need of some attention but a grand old lady,” said the ad I’d answered in the classifieds) four-unit Victorian in Noe Valley. A lesbian couple in their seventies, they occupied the top-floor flat. We lived on the second floor, the Patel family (Raj, Sunite, and their daughter, Anjuli) lived on the first, and Tommy Catsos, a middle-aged bookstore clerk, lived in the basement.
I loved Rose and Doro. Every Saturday morning, I’d go to the Golden Gate Bakery to get a treat for them. When I rang their bell, the telltale white box in my hands, Rose would open the door and feign surprise.
“Oh, Lux,” she’d say, hand over her heart. “A mooncake?”
“And a Chinese egg tart,” I’d answer.
“Just what I was in the mood for! How did you know?”
This Saturday was no different, except for the fact that the two women wore glaringly white Adidas sneakers and were dressed in primary colors, like kindergartners. They were in their protesting clothes.
“We’re going to City Hall. Harvey’s”—Doro meant the activist Harvey Milk; they were on a first-name basis with him—“holding a rally, and then there’s to be some sort of a parade down Van Ness. Come with us, Lux.”
“We shall be out all day, I would think,” said Rose.
Rose and Doro were highly political, tolerant, extremely smart (Doro had been a chemist, Rose an engineer), and believers in everything: abortion rights, interracial marriage, and the ERA. Why not? was their creed.
“You’ll join us, of course,” said Doro.
I frequently gave up my weekends to march, picket, or protest, dragging Benno along with me. I believed in everything, too.
I put the bakery box on the counter. “I can’t. I’m going on a camping trip.”
“Oh, how wonderful!” said Doro. “Good for you, Lux. A Waldenesque sojourn into nature.”
“Would you like to bring a little …?” asked Rose. She put her thumb and index finger to her mouth and mimed inhaling.
“You smoke?”
“No, dear, we don’t partake, but we like to have it for our guests. Shall I get some for you?”
I wasn’t a big pot smoker.
“Just one joint,” said Doro. “You never know.”
Only in San Francisco would an old woman be pushing pot instead of a cookie and a nice cup of tea on you.
“All right,” I agreed.
“Marvelous!” they both chimed, as if I’d told them they’d just won the lottery.
I’d purchased five Snoopy cards from the Hallmark store to send to Benno in Newport. I didn’t want to overwhelm him or make him homesick. I just wanted him to know I was there. Filling them out was a surprisingly difficult task. I was going for breezy, with an undertone of Mommy loves you so much but she did not sleep in your bed last night. Here’s what I came up with:
Benno, I hope you had a great day!
Benno, Hope you’re having a great day!
Benno, I’m sure you’re having a great day!
Benno, Great day here, I hope it was a great day there, too.
Benno, Great day? Mine was!
I asked Rhonda to mail a card each great day I was gone.
I wanted to camp somewhere I hadn’t been before. I chose Sonoma, about forty miles from San Francisco. Wine country. Also referred to as the Valley of the Moon. When I read about it in my guidebook, I knew this was where I would go. Who could resist a place called Valley of the Moon? It was an incantation. A clarion call. Just saying it gave me goosebumps.
It was the Miwok and Pomo tribes who came up with the name Sonoma. There was some dispute as to whether it meant “valley of the moon” or “many moons” (some people claimed the moon seemed to rise there several times in one night), but that wasn’t important. What was important was that the Valley of the Moon was supposed to be enchanting: rushing creeks and madrones, old orchards and wildflowers. The perfect place to lose myself. Or find myself. If I was lucky, a little of both.
By the time I’d finished packing, it was just after noon and 428 Elizabeth Street was empty. Rose and Doro were still at the rally, Tommy was working, Rhonda had taken the bus across the bay to visit with her family, and the Patels had gone off for a picnic in the park. I threw my pack in the trunk of my car and hit the road.
An hour and a half later, I pulled into the parking lot of Jack London State Park.
I relied on instinct out in the woods; I depended on my gut. I could have made camp in a few places, but none of them was just right. Finally I found the perfect spot.
The scent of laurel and bay leaves led me to a creek. I trekked up the bank to a small redwood grove. Sweat dripped between my shoulder blades. I was in my element; I could have gone another ten miles if needed. I dropped my pack. Yes, this was it. The air smelled of pine needles and cedar. The clearing felt holy, like a cathedral. I punched my arms in the air and hooted.
I experienced the absence of Benno (not having to hold him as a fact in my mind every minute) as a continual dissonance. I had to remind myself: He’s not here. He’s okay. He’s with Mom. I hoped the shock would lessen as the days went on and that I’d not only acclimate to the solitude, but relish it. Nobody needed me. Nobody was judging me. I could do or act or feel however I wanted.
I peeled off my sweaty tank top. I stood there for a moment, bare-chested. It was warm now, but once it got dark the temperature would drop. I draped the tank top over a bush to dry and put on a clean T-shirt.
I pitched my tent. Beside my sleeping bag went The Hobbit, a pocket-size transistor radio, Doro’s joint, a book of matches, and a flashlight.
For dinner I ate two Slim Jims and some peanut butter. By this time the woods were purpling with dusk. I crawled into my sleeping bag. In the pages of The Hobbit I’d tucked the Polaroid of Benno and me. I kissed my fingers and pressed them on his image. Good night, sweet boy.
I thought about reading. I thought about taking a puff of the joint. I did neither. I put my head down on the folded-up sweater that served as my pillow and instantly fell asleep.
I awoke in the middle of the night. It was freezing; I could see my breath. I slid on my jeans. I had to pee badly.
I unzipped the tent and stepped outside. Fog had enveloped the campsite, a fog so thick I couldn’t see three feet in front of me. I gingerly walked a few yards from the tent, pulled down my jeans, squatted, and peed. The fog cleared for a moment and a glorious full moon bobbed above me in a star-studded sky. Seconds later the fog descended and my stomach clenched. I felt trapped.
I saw a light off in the near distance. It blinked once and disappeared. I stared steadily at it. It blinked again. Somebody must have a cabin out here.
Suddenly I was desperate not to be alone.
It seemed like only minutes, but it must have taken me hours to find that light, because when I broke through the fog, it was day and the sun shone brightly.
I stood at the edge of a meadow. This was no cabin; it was a large, barnlike structure, wood-shingled with red trim. Through the open doors, I could see dozens of people sitting at long tables. Silverware clinked. The smell of bacon wafted through the air.
A pang of loneliness struck me, seeing them all there, dining together. I frequently felt this way when I came upon groups, at the beach, at Seven Hills—the worst was the Christmas Eve service at Grace Cathedral. As if everybody but me had people. I guess I had people: Benno and, sometimes, Rhonda (on the rare nights she was home—she had quite a social life), but what I really wanted was a tribe.
I don’t know how long I stood there, spying on them, wishing somebody would see me and invite me over. Finally I screwed up my courage and began walking across the meadow. I had nothing to lose. They’d either welcome me or send me on my way.
JOSEPH (#ulink_601c53b6-8e27-58c8-8477-a1aa4a27467b)
Valley of the Moon1906 (#ulink_601c53b6-8e27-58c8-8477-a1aa4a27467b)
A young woman stood at the threshold of the dining hall. A stranger. One moment we were eating breakfast, the next moment she was standing there. There was an air of impermanence about her. Was she an apparition?
“Um, hello,” she said, blinking.
“Finally!” cried Fancy, jumping up from the bench. “You’re here! I never doubted you’d come. I never gave up hope!”
Before I could stop my sister, she ran to the woman and embraced her. “Are there others? Is it just you? Why did it take you so long?”
Four months had passed since the fog had encircled us. In public I was always careful to use the word encircled rather than trapped. It left the door cracked open a bit. And through this open door had come—
“I think you’ve mistaken me for somebody else,” the woman said, her cheeks flushed. “I mean, I’d like to be the one you expected. But I don’t think I am.”
No, she was not the one I expected; I never could have dreamed her up. Why was she dressed so strangely? Was she going to some sort of a costume party? Unlike the Greengage women, who wore their hair neatly pinned back, hers was loose, with a fringe so long it nearly covered her eyes. Instead of a skirt, she had on dungarees that clung to her pelvis and thighs. She wore a shirt that said KING’S ALE—SMILE IF YOU HAD IT LAST NIGHT.
“Look, Joseph,” said Fancy, beaming, as if she herself were responsible for the woman’s appearance. “Look!”
I walked over to them, fighting a vertiginous sensation. I felt exactly as I had just after the earthquake, when Martha and I discovered everything and everybody in Greengage was intact. Utter disorientation. As if my cells were being forcibly rearranged.
“I’m Joseph Bell,” I said, introducing myself.
“Lux Lysander,” she said, shaking my hand firmly.
Her eyes darted around the room, taking us all in. She had the same bewildered look on her face that I’m sure I had on mine.
“Are you shooting a film?”
Shooting a film? “How did you find us?” I asked.
“I saw your light through the fog.”
“You came through the fog?”
She rubbed her upper arms and shivered. “It was so thick.”
“So you weren’t looking for us?” asked Fancy. “You just stumbled through the fog? And stumbled upon us here?”
Lux raised her shoulders somewhat apologetically.
“Did the fog make you feel ill?” I asked.
“Ill how?”
“Shortness of breath? Heart palpitations?”
“I felt a little claustrophobic, so my heart was probably racing, but no, I didn’t feel ill.” She looked around the room as 278 pairs of puzzled eyes stared back at her.
“I think I should leave,” she said. “Obviously I’m interrupting something.”
She backed out of the room, turned quickly, and started walking across the meadow.
“No, wait!” I shouted. I caught up with her, grabbed her elbow, and spun her around. “Please indulge me. Allow me to ask you a few more questions about the fog.”
She looked alarmed. “Why? What’s the big deal about the fog?”
“As you said, it’s an unusually thick fog. And it’s been here for a long time.”
A group had gathered around us, desperate for information. I’d hoped to be able to question the stranger privately, but I could see that would not be an option.
“Please. May I ask you a few more questions?”
“Okay. I guess so,” said Lux slowly.
“Thank you. Can you estimate how large an area is fogged in?”
“I’m bad at estimating distances.”
“All right. How long did it take you to come through the fog?”
“Well, that was strange. It felt like just minutes, but it must have taken me much longer, because it was midnight when I left my campsite, but then when I got here it was morning.”
Again that stomach-dropping feeling.
“You walked through the fog for a few miles?”
“Um—probably.”
“You were camping? Where?”
“In the Valley of the Moon. Jack London State Park.”
Jack London had his own state park? I knew he was doing well (he’d just spent thousands procuring a neighboring parcel of land), but I didn’t know he was doing that well. A park named after himself? He’d always been a bit of a narcissist.
“Was the fog there when you arrived?”
“No, it was a beautiful clear night. I didn’t get fogged in until after midnight, as I already told you.” She was getting irritated at my line of questioning.
I was about to ask her about the earthquake—How had Glen Ellen and Santa Rosa fared? And what about San Francisco?—when Magnusson came up behind me and whispered in my ear, “Test the fog.”
Yes. Whatever the woman said would be moot if we could now travel through the fog freely as she just had.
“Nardo!” I yelled.
A young man with a head of thick black hair made his way up to me. Our resident pig-keeper.
“We need a piglet,” I said.
“Berkshire or Gloucestershire?”
“Gloucestershire. Get a runt.”
I smiled at Lux, trying to put her at ease, and she shifted her weight from her left to her right foot nervously. “Are we done here?”
“Almost,” I said.
Nardo disappeared and a few minutes later returned with a piglet, pink with black spots, tucked under his arm.
Lux lit up at the sight of the pig. “Oh, he’s adorable.”
“Give the pig to her,” I said.
Nardo handed him over. “He’s scared. Hold him close. Let him feel your heart beating.”
“Will you do me one last favor?” I asked Lux. “Before you go.”
But she was preoccupied with the piglet. “You need a name. I’m going to name you Wilbur,” she said, stroking its silky ear. “You know, from Charlotte’s Web.”
I nodded impatiently. “Will you step into the fog for a moment? With the pig?”
“Why do you want me to do that?”
“I need to test a hypothesis.”
“What hypothesis?”
I’d have to tell her the truth—a partial truth anyway. “The fog makes us sick. But it didn’t make you sick.”
“Why does the fog make you sick?”
I couldn’t think of a lie quickly enough. “I have no idea,” I said.
Her face softened. “Oh. Okay. So you’re wondering if something’s changed. That’s why you’re all looking at me this way. Because I came through and I’m fine and now you’re wondering if you’ll be fine, too?”
“Exactly.”
“You want me to test it out for you. With the pig?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
Everybody had left the dining hall now and was standing just a few feet behind us, listening carefully to our conversation.
“Please,” said Fancy.
“All right. But then I really have to go,” she said.
I pulled out my pocket watch. “Sixty seconds. I’ll let you know when it’s time to come out.”
“You’re not worried I’ll run away with your prized pig?” she joked.
That was the least of my worries.
She entered the fog. A minute later I called to her and she stepped back into the sun. The pig lay still in her arms.
“You—it’s dead,” she stammered. She glared at me. “It’s your fault. You did this. You made me kill it. Why did you do that?” she cried.
“I’m sorry. Listen, it’s only a pig,” I said, thinking at least it wasn’t one of us.
She shook her head, angry. “I have to leave right now. I’ve got to go home.” Clearly rattled by the pig’s death, she blathered on. “It’s almost time for my son to start school. I haven’t even bought his school supplies.”
“But it’s only August,” I said.
As I said it, I was struck by a foreboding which I realized I’d been trying to fend off from the moment she arrived. But now it overtook me, filling me with trepidation.
“Mid-August,” she said, “practically late August. The sixteenth. Nineteen seventy-five—in case you’ve forgotten,” she added, looking me up and down. My trousers and suspenders. My boots and linen shirt.
I could sense everybody behind me stunned into silence, holding their breath. I finally said, “Well.”
Well was a workhorse of a word that could mean so many things. Well, nice to have met you. Well, this certainly has been an illuminating conversation. Well, a madwoman had found her way through the fog to Greengage.
“I don’t feel so good,” said Lux.
“What’s wrong?” asked Martha. She was using her clinical voice, firm and calming. It made you want to tell her everything.
“I’m dizzy,” said Lux. “I think I’m going to puke.”
She swayed and slid to the ground, the pig falling out of her arms. Then she went very still. Martha sank to her knees and pressed her fingers to the side of her neck, seeking out her pulse.
Dear God! Had I done this by forcing her back into the fog? Had I killed her?
“She just fainted,” said Martha, sitting back on her heels. “She’ll be fine. No thanks to you, Joseph. Asking her all those questions. Scaring her half to death. What were you thinking?”
Fancy, dumbstruck, said, “Nineteen seventy-five?”
Fancy’s comment triggered the crowd and everybody started speaking at once.
Martha ignored the hysterics.
“Let’s get her home,” she said to me.
I bent and lifted her into my arms. Lux. This stranger.
Her name meant light.
We were halfway to the house when Martha said, “It was a full moon yesterday, wasn’t it?”
During the four months we’d been trapped, it seemed that full moon days passed differently than all the rest of the days of the month. Just after midnight on the day of the full moon, time began to race by. Like a record on a gramophone played at ten times the normal speed, we sped up, too. Hours seemed to go by in minutes. The sensation lasted for twenty-four hours. It was only on the morning after the full moon that time resumed its natural pace.
“The earthquake happened on the day of the full moon,” she reminded me.
“What are you implying?”
She made the irritated face she always made when she hadn’t quite figured something out.
“Obviously she’s mentally unstable,” I said.
“That’s just it. She doesn’t seem unstable to me. Joseph—” She stopped. “What if she’s perfectly sane?”
“Put her in the wing. The back bedroom,” said Martha.
I laid Lux on the bed and she did not wake. Since she was unconscious, the two of us took the opportunity to survey her openly.
“What is the meaning of her shirt?” asked Martha.
“Something … sexual?” I guessed.
“Maybe. But why does she wear it?”
“Perhaps she likes drawing attention to herself.”
“How can she breathe in those trousers? That can’t be good for her reproductive organs. I wonder if she has any identification on her? I’m going to check her pockets,” Martha announced.
She approached the bed and slid her hand into Lux’s left dungaree pocket. Nothing. From her right pocket she pulled out a wrinkled-up sweets wrapper. Jolly Rancher. She smelled it.
“Cherry,” she said. “Admit it, Joseph.”
“What?”
“You’ve never seen any woman dressed like this.”
“Yes, because I do not make a habit of cavorting with the insane.”
“Oh, stop it. Something about her isn’t right, but it isn’t that she’s crazy. There is no mercantile on earth that sells clothes like this in 1906.”
“You’re saying she’s telling the truth?”
“I’m saying you have to open your mind. The unexplainable has already happened. We’ve been trapped by a fifty-foot wall of fog for four months. If we try to walk through it, we die. We must consider other”—she whispered, as if it hurt her to say it—“possibilities.”
I sat down in a chair.
“What are you going to do?” she demanded.
“I’m going to wait until she wakes up.”
“And then?” she pressed me.
“And then I’ll ask her some more questions,” I said, trying to sound as if I had a plan.
LUX (#ulink_35f6cad2-27ca-5828-b365-0f3c77a4206c)
The sheets smelled of sun. The man who’d made me kill poor innocent Wilbur stood looking out the window, his back to me. I coughed and he turned around.
“You’re awake,” he said.
Joseph, that was his name. He was about six feet tall, with dark hair and eerie light blue eyes. His face was tanned and a bit weathered; he was middle-aged, probably in his forties, but he was in good shape. He bristled with vitality.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You fainted.”
“I did?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember feeling dizzy.”
“And how do you feel now?”
I took stock. No headache, no dizziness—I was hungry, however. “Starving.”
“When did you eat last?”
“Around seven last night. A couple of spoonfuls of Jif.”
He made a funny face and I was embarrassed, as well as intimidated. He had a posh English accent.
The room was furnished impeccably in nineteenth-century farmhouse décor; not a detail had been overlooked. There was a washstand with a basin and pitcher. A rag rug. A lantern hung on the wall. The floor was hardwood, studded with black nails. The mattress rustled beneath me. Horsehair.
Why was the house outfitted like this? And why was this man dressed like Pa from Little House on the Prairie? Was this a movie set? Was he an actor? My mind kept scrabbling for purchase. The only thing that made sense was that they were in the middle of filming a scene when I arrived. But why didn’t they stop acting when I’d barged onto the set? And why did the pig die when I entered the fog? That wasn’t a special effect. The pig had really died; I’d felt its limbs go slack.
My heart started to pound. I put my hand on my chest to try and slow it down.
“Rest,” he said. “I’ll go get you something to eat.”
The thought of being left alone panicked me. I grabbed ahold of his arm. “No, please don’t leave.”
He stared down at my hand, seemingly taken aback that I’d touched him, and I forced myself to loosen my grasp.
“I’m only going downstairs. I’ll be back in a few moments,” he said.
I looked at him wild-eyed.
“I promise, Lux.”
He had a deep, resonant voice that immediately comforted me. It told me this was a man who did what he said he was going to do. Still, I didn’t want to be left alone.
“I’m coming with you.”
“You should stay.”
“Nope, I’m coming.” I slid my legs over the side of the bed.
When he saw that it was useless to try to stop me, he helped me to my feet and led me out of the room and toward the stairs. He pointed out the landing window. “That’s Martha, my wife.”
A woman knelt in the garden, her back to us. She tossed a pile of weeds in a basket.
“You live here? You and your wife?”
“Yes.”
“For real? All the time?”
“It appears so,” he said wearily.
“Dressed this way? Sleeping on horsehair mattresses on purpose?”
He stuck his head through the open window. “Martha!” he shouted.
She swiveled around. It was the woman who’d asked me what was wrong just before I’d fainted.
“For God’s sake, she’s awake, come inside!”
Martha got to her feet, wiping her hands on her apron. She, too, was attired head-to-toe in period garb. An ankle-length skirt, a long-sleeved blouse, and button-up boots.
“You’re not an actor? This is not a movie set?”
“No,” he confirmed.
“I don’t understand. Why would you choose to live like you’re in the nineteenth century? Are you a religious sect? Is this some sort of a commune?”
I didn’t really think they were a religious sect, but I hadn’t yet landed on any other plausible explanation. Oddly, he seemed as confused as I felt. His pupils enlarged as he took in my jeans and hiking boots; my appearance was just as shocking to him as his was to me.
“Come down!” Martha called up from the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll make you a sandwich.”
Martha brought a bowl of plums to the table. She was a petite woman, so small that from a distance she looked like a child. Her blond hair was parted in the middle and pulled back severely, but she had a kind face.
“Are you still hungry?” she asked. “Have some fruit.”
I’d already devoured my sandwich. “No, thanks, I’m good.”
We were making small talk but the atmosphere was dense. Questions were gathering like storm clouds. I had questions, too, but they could wait. Their need to know seemed more urgent.
“We are not actors. We are not a religious sect. This is not a commune,” said Joseph.
“I didn’t mean to insult you. I was just trying to understand what was going on. Where I was,” I said.
“You’re at Greengage Farm,” said Martha. “In the Valley of the Moon. You’ve heard of Greengage?” she asked.
“No.”
Martha turned to Joseph, her eyebrows knit together in worry, no longer able to hide her emotions. “But we’ve been here for seventeen years. Everybody knows who we are.”
I shrugged. “I’m sorry. I live in San Francisco. That’s probably why I’ve never heard of you.”
Joseph picked up Martha’s hand and squeezed it.
“It’s 1975?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said, baffled.
He gave me a grave look.
“What is the problem?” I asked.
He hesitated. “It’s 1906 here.”
Joseph told me their story. It was simple enough. The earthquake. The fog. Stuck here for four months. Then I arrived.
What wasn’t simple—believing it.
“You can’t expect me to buy this,” I said.
“It’s the truth,” said Joseph.
“Well, if it’s the truth, I need proof.”
“Where’s your proof you’re from 1975?” he asked.
“Look at me,” I said, pointing to my shirt.
“Look at us. That’s your proof as well,” said Joseph.
“Show her your passport,” said Martha. “In the parlor desk. Right-hand drawer.”
He sighed, but left to retrieve it.
“I’m sure this must be quite shocking,” said Martha. “But I assure you we are just as shocked.”
I stared at her and shook my head. They were dressed this way because they were from the past? Because they’d somehow got stuck in time? It was laughable. But Martha didn’t look crazy. She looked completely sane.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. But what you’re asking me to believe is impossible,” I said.
“I know,” said Martha.
“It’s preposterous.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
Joseph returned with his passport. It wasn’t a booklet, like our current-day passports; it was a piece of paper pasted into a leather folio.
By order of Queen Victoria, Joseph Beauford Bell is allowed to pass freely and without hindrance into the United States of America … blah, blah, blah, antiquated language. His date of birth. July 20, 1864. And at the bottom of the page—a photograph.
Unmistakably him.
When I was a child, my father forbade me to read science fiction or fantasy. Trash of the highest order, he said. He didn’t want me muddying up my young, impressionable mind with crap. If it wasn’t worthy of being reviewed in the Times, it did not make it onto our bookshelves.
So while my classmates gleefully dove into TheLion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,A Wrinkle in Time, and TheBorrowers, I was stuck reading Old Yeller.
My saving grace—I was the most popular girl in my class. That’s not saying much; it was easy to be popular at that age. All you had to do was wear your hair in French braids, tell your friends your parents let you drink grape soda every night at dinner, and take any dare. I stood in a bucket of hot water for five minutes without having to pee. I ate four New York System wieners (with onions) in one sitting. I cut my own bangs and—bam!—I was queen of the class.
As a result I was invited on sleepovers practically every weekend, and it was there that I cheated. I skipped the séances and the Ouija board. I crept into my sleeping bag with a flashlight, zipped it up tight, and pored through those contraband books. I fell into Narnia. I tessered with Meg and Charles Wallace; I lived under the floorboards with Arrietty and Pod.
I think it was precisely because those books were forbidden that they lived on in me long past the time that they should have. For whatever reason, I didn’t outgrow them. I was constantly on the lookout for the secret portal, the unmarked door that would lead me to another world.
I never thought I would actually find it.
While I examined Joseph’s passport, Martha did some quick calculations on a piece of paper.
“Joseph, if she’s telling the truth, sixty-nine years have passed out there, but only four months in Greengage. That means almost three and a half of her hours pass per minute here. She’s been here half an hour at least. That’s about four and a half days she’s been gone. Her people will be panicked. We’ve got to take her back to the fog immediately.”
If she’s telling the truth. They didn’t believe me? Martha looked stricken with worry. Real worry, not fake. Three and a half hours passing per minute? Come on! Part of me wanted to laugh. I half expected a camera crew to come busting out of the pantry. But what if they were telling the truth and three and a half hours were passing per minute here? Oh God. If I stayed in Greengage just another hour, almost two weeks would have gone by at home.
“I’ve got to go!” I cried.
“Yes, you do,” said Martha.
“No, you don’t,” said Joseph firmly. “There’s no need to panic. You’re on regular time now. I’d stake my life on it.”
“We can’t take that chance, Joseph,” said Martha.
“What the hell are you two talking about?” I asked, getting more and more confused.
“Come,” said Martha. “We’ll take you to the fog. We’ll try and explain as we’re walking.”
I looked back and forth between the two of them. If they were acting, they were putting on an amazing show.
We walked at a brisk pace, just short of a jog.
“That feeling we’ve had on full moon days, Martha … that sensation,” Joseph said. He trailed off—whatever it was he was trying to describe was not easily articulated.
“Let me ask you something, Lux. Does it feel like time is racing by right now?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
In fact it felt like the opposite. My anxiety was making time feel as opaque as stone.
“It feels like it’s passing normally, correct?” he prompted.
“Well, it’s not exactly zipping along,” I said.
“For you, too, Martha?”
“Yes.”
“But yesterday, before she came?” he asked Martha.
They exchanged solemn glances.
“What? Tell me,” I said.
“Yesterday the day was over in what felt like an hour,” she said. “It’s been like that every full moon day since the earthquake.”
“We knew it, we just didn’t want to acknowledge it. The existence of this young woman confirms it,” Joseph said to Martha. “Time has been speeding up on full moon days and to the tune of approximately fourteen years. But only on full moon days.” He turned to me. “The rest of the days of the month—like today—time passes here exactly as it passes out there on the other side of the fog.”
He nodded at me. “I don’t think you’re in any danger, Lux. You made it through the fog perfectly fine. And unlike us, it appears you can leave anytime. You can leave right now if you want to.”
We had reached the meadow. The wall of fog still hung there.
“I think she should go,” said Martha. “We don’t want to take any chances.”
I thought of Benno with my parents. Day two of his vacation.
“Please, go,” pleaded Martha.
“If I go, will I be able to come back?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
I’d always had a sixth sense about Benno being in danger. I knew moments before he fell off the jungle gym that he was about to fall off. I would often wake in the middle of the night just before he woke with a nightmare. We were that close, that connected. I tried to reach out to him, to feel him three thousand miles away in Newport. I sensed nothing but good, clear energy. He was probably sitting on the couch with my mother, eating apple slices.
“I want to test out the fog once more,” I said. “Make sure I’m okay in it. That I really can leave whenever I want.”
Martha gave me a concerned look.
“I’ll stay in there just a minute,” I said.
“You have somebody—at home?” Joseph asked.
“Yes.”
“If you decide not to come back, we’ll understand,” he said.
Heart thudding, I walked into the fog. It was thick, but I had no trouble breathing. In fact, it seemed completely indifferent to me. I turned my back on Greengage and tried to peer through the fog to my campsite. I saw the faintest of glows, which comforted me: it was daylight in my time just as it was daylight here. I listened carefully and heard the hum of Route 12. And then a song. A car radio as it drove by. The unmistakable chorus of Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together.” That song reassured me like nothing else—it was on a constant loop on every station in 1975.
“A minute’s up,” said Joseph.
I hesitated, then stepped into the past.
“You’re sure?” I asked Joseph, back at the house. “That unless it’s the day of the full moon, time passes regularly here?”
“As sure as I can be.”
Martha frowned. “I still think she should go back.”
Now that I’d convinced myself time was passing normally on the other side of the fog, I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want them to force me to. I had something to offer them. Information. I would parcel it out to them while trying to figure out what was really going on.
“We studied the earthquake in school,” I said. “It leveled San Francisco. The city went up in flames. It was an eight-point-something on the Richter scale.”
“The Richter scale?” asked Joseph.
“It’s a way to measure the magnitude of a quake.”
“Eight points is high?”
“It’s a monster.”
“We kept waiting for somebody to rescue us,” said Martha. “We were well known in Sonoma. We sold our produce to every restaurant and grocery store within fifty miles of the farm. Why didn’t people come looking for us?”
Joseph rubbed his temples and sank lower in his seat. I could see the depression enveloping him. Crazy or not, I had to do something.
“When I go home, I’ll get help.”
“What kind of help could you possibly get?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Who could figure out a way to get you out of the fog? A physicist?”
He gave me a skeptical look.
“Maybe a meteorologist?” I said, attempting a joke. “Look, I’m not kidding. There’s got to be a solution.” Even though part of me was still not accepting the reality of all this, I forged ahead. “What about if I got some sort of a vehicle here? We could drive you through the fog.”
“We tried that,” said Joseph. “We have a Model T. Magnusson built a compartment for it. It was airtight. It didn’t work.”
The front door opened and footsteps pattered down the hallway.
“My sister, Fancy,” said Joseph.
The woman who’d hugged me when I first arrived walked into the room. Her dark hair was cut in a pixie. She wore crimson silk pants and a green kimono top. Compared to Joseph and Martha, she looked like a circus performer.
“Is it true?” she asked Joseph. “Is it true?” she asked me, not waiting for her brother’s reply. “Are you really from 1975?”
“I am.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “I’ve missed everything,” she cried.
I understood what it was like to feel like life was passing you by.
“Did women finally get the right to vote?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What year?”
“Nineteen twenty, I think. Here in the States, anyway.”
“Oh goodness, it took that long, did it? I have so many questions. Is she going back? Are you going back?” She looked at me with a desolate face, handing me something folded up in a cloth napkin. “I brought you a treat. A bribe, really, to induce you to stay. Some of Elisabetta’s almond sponge cake.”
I opened the napkin. A square of golden cake was nestled into the cloth. “No inducing necessary,” I said. “I’m staying.”
I was still far from convinced it was 1906, but I wasn’t leaving without looking around a bit more.
“For the day,” clarified Martha.
“Goody!” said Fancy, clapping her hands. “There’s so much we have to talk about.”
Suddenly I was aware of how bad I must look. My shirt was smeared with mud. I smelled of Wilbur, of barnyard. I tried to smooth my hair down, untangle it with my fingers, but it was hopeless.
“You’ll want to clean up,” said Martha.
“I’d love a quick shower,” I confessed.
Martha filled two large pots with water and put them on the woodstove. “Fancy, help me with the tub. It’s in the scullery.”
The two women carried a tin tub into the kitchen. There was no such thing as a quick shower here.
“I didn’t mean for you to go to all that trouble. I’ll just wash up at the sink. Or in the bedroom,” I said, remembering the basin and pitcher.
“Nonsense,” said Martha.
She emanated calm. She was a woman who dealt with the facts. I was here. I was dirty. I needed a proper bath.
“Your clothes will have to be washed. Get her something to wear in the meantime, Fancy,” said Martha.
“You mean like a corset?” Was Martha wearing one right now? Her waist was tiny.
“I don’t wear corsets and neither should you, Lux,” said Fancy. “Constricts the lungs and the liver. Death traps. I believe in a more natural look.”
The conversation had taken a disturbingly intimate turn.
“You may find me in the parlor when you’re done,” said Joseph, disappearing.
“There is nothing natural about your look, Fancy,” said Martha.
Fancy’s brightly colored silks were definitely not the norm, but I appreciated them.
“It’s the latest style, I’ll have you know. From Shanghai,” she sniffed.
Once the water was hot, Martha poured the contents of the two pots into the tub, retrieved a towel and a cake of soap, and handed them to me.
“Martha makes the most brilliant soaps,” said Fancy.
I smelled the soap. Lavender.
Martha abruptly left the room without speaking. Had I done something wrong?
“Don’t take it personally. She’s not good with hellos and goodbyes,” said Fancy. “We are going to be friends, I just know it.” She smiled. “Would you like to know a little about me? I’m sure you’re very curious.”
She gazed at me expectantly.
“Of course,” I said.
“Well, I’ve never been married. I’ve come close. I was engaged to Albert Alderson, but I called it off at the last minute, and do you want to know why? He had horrible breath, like blue cheese. Edward, my father, was so angry. He said, ‘You’re calling off a marriage because of halitosis? Give the poor man a mint! Or breathe through your mouth.’ Yes, Father dear, I’ll breathe through my mouth for the next fifty years. Ah, poor Edward. I’m afraid both his children gravely disappointed him. Are you married, Lux?”
I hesitated. “Yes,” I lied. If she really was from an earlier era, I didn’t want to put her off.
“Really, you lucky girl! There’s nobody interesting here. What’s your husband’s name? Tell me all about him.” She leaned forward, her eyes bright.
“Oh. Well, I sort of misspoke. I was married, but I’m not anymore.”
Her face fell. I could tell what she was thinking. Was I a divorcée? To her, that was probably even worse than having a child out of wedlock.
“I’m a widow. I have been for a while. He, my husband, died years ago.”
Who knows? Maybe Nelson and I would have gotten married if he’d lived. It was another lie, but it wasn’t that much of a stretch.
“Oh, Lux, how awful.”
“It’s okay, we don’t have to talk about it.”
“I’m so sorry. How rude of me to interrogate you like this when we’ve only just met.” She stood. “I’ll go upstairs and gather up some clothes. You have a lovely, long soak.”
I didn’t have time for baths at home. Something about the experience made me feel like a child. I trailed my hands through the warm, soapy water and took inventory of the room. Pots of herbs lined the windowsill: chives, tarragon, and mint. On the shelves, stacks of simple white crockery. On the wooden table, bowls piled high with fruit and vegetables: peaches, plums, a basket of corn. It was so perfect—I still couldn’t shake the feeling I was on a movie set.
My mother once told me impossibility was a circle. You started at the top and immediately fell, plunging down the curve, all the while saying to yourself, This can’t be. Then you reached the hollow at the bottom. The dip. A dangerous place. You could lose yourself. Stay there forever, devoid of hope, of wonder. Or you could sit in that dip, kick your legs out and pump. Swing yourself clear up the other side of the curve to the tippy-top of the circle, where impossibility and possibility met, where for one shining moment they became the same thing. I pointed my toes underwater in the tub and gave a kick, so small it barely disturbed the surface of the water.
When had I grown so cautious?
The clothes were surprisingly comfortable. A pale blue blouse, velvety soft from being laundered so many times, and an oatmeal-colored cotton skirt, loose enough that it didn’t bind at the waist. I felt strangely liberated wearing the outfit, grateful to leave my jeans behind. Fancy had given me a tortoiseshell clip, but I had no idea how to use it to pin my hair back. Instead I braided it loosely and bound the end with a bit of twine I found on the counter.
Finally I made my way to the parlor, where I found Joseph sitting in a leather chair, his eyes closed, listening to opera on a gramophone. An Italian soprano keening in a minor key.
The room felt intimate and cozy. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A piano and a large mahogany desk that was covered with letters, papers, a microscope, sheet music, and—was that an ostrich egg? The air smelled pleasantly of candle wax and tobacco.
“All freshened up?” he said.
How long had he been watching me?
“It’s a beautiful room. Inspiring.”
“Inspiring? How?”
“I don’t know. It just makes you want to do things. Discover things. Get out into the world.”
“Ah,” he said.
I was tongue-tied, seemingly incapable of saying anything intelligent while still occupied with casting about for an explanation. I needed to find some sort of strategy to calm my mind. I decided I would act as if this was really 1906, without truly accepting it. In that duality I was able to move forward.
“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You look—” He trailed off, as if he thought better of what he was about to say.
“Shell-shocked?” I offered.
He nodded. “You find this impossible to believe.”
“Well—yes,” I admitted.
He sat erect in his chair. “How can I help?”
How can I help? Had anybody ever asked me that? He had such a calm, steady presence about him. His gaze didn’t flit away from mine. He looked directly into my eyes without blinking. I was hanging on a rock face, searching desperately for my next handhold. He was offering to throw a rope up to me, to be my belayer.
“You’re not lying, are you?”
“I don’t lie,” he said.
“You really believe it’s 1906.”
“It’s 1906, Lux.”
“Do you believe I’m from 1975?”
“I must confess I’m struggling a bit with that.”
“You think I’m lying?”
“No. I think you believe it’s 1975.”
“Then you think I’m crazy.”
He hesitated and then said, “It has crossed my mind.”
“So we’re both thinking the same thing. That the other is a lunatic.”
I don’t know who began laughing first, but the laughter was contagious. I stood ten feet away from him, but that distance closed rapidly, our communal astonishment at the madness of our situation serving as a bridge, connecting us to one another.
Finally he stood. “I think a tour of Greengage is in order.”
“You want to give me proof that this place is really what you say it is.”
“Proof and a chance to show the farm off.”
“You’re the one in charge? The owner?” I suspected he was—everybody looked to him.
“I bought the original parcel of land, but as far as I’m concerned we all own Greengage Farm equally.”
“Greengage? Oh, because of the plums? You must grow them. I love greengage jam.”
“We don’t grow greengage plums. They are notoriously hard to grow.”
“Then why did you name the farm Greengage?”
He frowned ever so slightly. “Would you like a tour?”
“Sorry. Yes, please,” I said. Stop asking so many questions, Lux.
As we walked, Joseph explained to me what he’d set out to do, what kind of a community he’d envisioned: a residential farm where all jobs were equally valued and all jobs, whether done by men or women, paid out the same wage.
“Women still don’t get paid as much as men,” I said.
I watched his reaction carefully. Would he be surprised to hear that fact? He didn’t seem to be.
“You were quite forward-thinking for your time, then,” I said. “A real feminist.”
“A feminist?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Somebody who supports women’s rights.”
“Yes. Yes. Of course.”
Unless he was a brilliant actor, he’d never heard the word feminist. You couldn’t open a newspaper or magazine in 1975 without reading an article about feminists protesting some inequity or another.
Despite my skepticism, my heart lifted. What he was describing was a truly egalitarian society. I was in the presence of an honest-to-God idealist. I wanted to share with him that I was an idealist, too, but the idealist in me had been driven underground. Buried by the past five years of a shitty, low-paying job, and my inability to figure out how to better my and Benno’s lives.
Please let him be real. Please let this place be true, a little voice inside me said.
It was August and the fields were high with corn. In the orchard the last of the peaches clung to their branches and the apples were showing their first pinkish blush. The vegetable garden overflowed with produce: peppers, green beans, zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. It was the farm’s busiest season, he explained.
There were people hard at work everywhere. Some ignored me when he brought me by; others stared boldly. I didn’t sense unfriendliness, more of a stunned curiosity. Would I help them? Would I hurt them? I tried to appear as unthreatening as possible. I said hello whenever I caught somebody’s eye; still, I knew they were relieved when I moved on. I felt like a voyeur. Perhaps they felt like an exhibition.
“How do you decide where to put people to work?” I asked.
An elderly man picked corn. For every ear of corn he put in the basket, the woman beside him picked a dozen. It obviously wasn’t an easy task for him.
“I don’t decide, they decide,” Joseph said. “If they want to be on the garden crew, they’re on the garden crew. If they want to be on the animal crew, they’re on the animal crew.”
“But what if everybody wants to be on the animal crew and nobody wants to be on the garden crew?”
“That’s never been the case. The numbers always work out.”
“But what if somebody isn’t suited for the particular kind of work they want to do?”
“There’s always some way they can contribute. If you tell a man he’s useless, he becomes useless.”
Yes. And if you tell a woman she’s only good enough to clean up people’s dirty plates, she’ll always be cleaning up people’s dirty plates, I thought.
“How many crews are there?” I asked.
“Garden, fields, orchard, brambles, animals, building, medical, domestic, kitchen, winery, and school,” he rattled off. “There’s also the herb garden, but that is Martha’s domain—she works alone.”
“Brambles?”
“Blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, too, even though they’re not technically a bramble. The bramble crew is mostly children, who end up eating practically everything they harvest. But it’s a fine first job for them. They have to learn how to pick around the thorns.”
“How many people live here?”
“Two hundred and seventy-eight: 55 children, 223 adults.”
“And you can produce enough food to feed you all?”
“More than enough. In fact, since the fog, we’ve let some fields and gardens go fallow.”
He led me into a large two-story building. “This is the workshop, the building crew’s home base, although most of them are out on the grounds this time of day.”
The workshop was cavernous. Tucked into the corner was a blacksmith station. Every kind of tool imaginable was neatly hung or stacked against the back wall. There was even a horse mill.
Maybe Greengage was a living-history museum, like Old Sturbridge Village or Colonial Williamsburg, where the employees were paid to dress up and stay in character no matter what.
A man sanded a plank at one of the tables. It looked like he was putting together a tiny house.
“Magnusson!” Joseph called out.
The man stalked across the workshop floor. He was an intimidating figure; he towered over Joseph. His hair was white-blond, his eyes cornflower blue.
He stared at me, clicking his massive jaw.
“For God’s sake, don’t be a cretin. Be polite and say hello,” said Joseph.
“Hello,” he grunted.
“What are you building? A house for elves?” I said nervously.
Magnusson rolled his eyes.
“A privy,” said Joseph.
A privy. Right. No flush toilets here.
“Sorry,” I said, then cringed. Act normal, Lux; they’re just people. I was surprised how badly I wanted them all to like me.
“What do you mill?” I asked.
Magnusson walked away without a word, done with me and my ridiculous questions.
“Grain,” answered Joseph. “Oats. Wheat and corn.”
“Oh,” I said in a small voice. “I’m sorry. I live in San Francisco. I don’t know how you do things on a farm.”
“That’s fine. I love talking about what we do.” He led me out of the workshop.
“I’m afraid I made a bad impression on your friend.”
“Magnusson is a Swede,” he said, as if that explained everything.
We walked past pretty little cottages and two dormitories. On our way to the schoolhouse, Joseph told me they didn’t keep to a regular school year. When the children were needed to help with a harvest, school let out. When the community work was done, school was back in session again.
The schoolhouse was empty today. Written on the chalkboard was a Walt Whitman quote.
Now I see the secret of making the best persons: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Sun streamed through the windows and birdsong filled the air. How I would love for Benno to go to school in a room like this. How I would have loved to have gone to a school like this. Against my better judgment, my spirits soared.
“Whitman is Martha’s patron saint,” Joseph said.
“Did you and Martha meet here on the farm?”
“We met at a lecture on cross-pollination methods for corn.”
Was he serious? He didn’t crack a smile. Yes, apparently he was serious.
“Is she from California?”
“She’s from Topeka, Kansas. A farmer’s daughter.”
He told me how Martha had been raised by her Scottish grandmother, a feisty old woman who ate bacon sandwiches, befriended the Kiowa, rode bareback, and practiced herbal medicine, as had her mother, and her mother before her. It was this grandmother who made sure Martha knew her digitalis from her purple coneflower, this grandmother who transformed her into a gifted herbalist.
“Martha’s a midwife as well,” he said.
“Wow. So she takes care of everybody?” Two-hundred-something people? That was a lot of responsibility.
“We have a physician here, too. Dr. Kilgallon, better known as Friar. They have an agreement. If it bleeds or is broken, it goes to Friar. Everything else goes to Martha.”
“So she treats people with what—tinctures?” I’d seen the row of tinctures at the co-op. I’d always been intrigued, but I was doubtful they’d work as well as Tums or Tylenol.
“Not just tinctures. She makes eye sponges and wine cordials, fever pastes, catarrh snuffs, blister treatments. But more often than not, her prescription is simple. Chop wood. Eat a beefsteak. Kiss your children,” he said.
“That works?”
“You’d be surprised. Never underestimate the power of having somebody pay attention to you.”
I wanted a Martha in my life.
He took me to the wine cave. Past the hay shed and the chicken coop, the sheep barn and the horse barn. We climbed into the hills and he proudly showed me one of the four springhouses on the property. Then he proceeded to give me a long lecture on gravity-propelled irrigation systems while we gazed down upon the farm, which was set in the bowl of the valley, a verdant paradise.
I was enchanted. My chest ached with longing. There was something here that was familiar, that I’d been missing but I hadn’t had any idea I’d been missing until this man had shown it to me.
“Well, if you have to be trapped, this is the place you’d want to be,” I said.
His face transformed into a mask of incredulity. “Good God.” He quickly walked away, leaving me to follow.
JOSEPH (#ulink_1d2f96cd-d159-547c-b375-953e53b200c5)
It was exhausting, trying to act normal around her when what I really wanted to do was ply her with questions. Instead she plied me with questions—clearly she’d never spent time on a working farm. Still, she was not a prissy woman. She didn’t hold her breath in the pigsty, or shudder when she learned she would have to relieve herself in a privy. I could see she was fit. Her hands were red and rough like Martha’s; she used them to make a living.
“Where in San Francisco do you reside?” I asked.
“Noe Valley.”
“Where do you work?”
“At a pub.”
“You’re a barkeep?”
“I’m a waitress, but don’t look so shocked. Women bartend, too. Where are we going?”
She was afraid I was taking her back to the fog. I have to admit, if I’d been told I’d traveled back in time nearly seventy years, I’d have run back to my own time as fast as I could. That would be most people’s natural reaction. Instead she’d worked hard to keep an open mind. She listened intently and soaked up every little detail, and gradually, over the course of the afternoon, I’d seen Greengage cast its spell on her. She hadn’t said anything to that effect, but it was written on her face—awe.
Despite my misgivings about her, I was heartened to see Greengage had lost none of its charms. Indeed, it had a beauty and goodness that seemed to transcend questions like the ones we were grappling with today. If she really was from 1975 (and I still wasn’t convinced), I couldn’t begin to imagine the things she’d seen. The kind of life she lived. That our simple community had dazzled her gave me hope.
All at once I realized how badly I wanted for her to be real. To be who she said she was.
“I’m taking you to the house for a rest. I’m sure you must be fatigued.”
She smiled. “I am. I am fatigued.”
“We eat early. The dinner bell rings at six.”
Her face clouded over. “I don’t have any money to pay for dinner. I didn’t bring any with me. I’m sorry.”
That was four times in the last hour that she’d apologized. I couldn’t hold my tongue.
“You must stop saying you’re sorry every other minute. It’s—there’s simply no need for it.” I stopped myself from saying how unattractive it was to hear a woman apologizing all the time. “There is no fee for dinner. You are our guest.”
I hadn’t laid my hand on any currency in four months. That had been one of the unforeseen boons of our strange circumstances, not having to worry about money, dispensing it or making it.
She stared at me, her color high.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” I said.
“You’re right. I apologize too much. I hate that about myself.” She looked off into the middle distance. “I’ll help clean up, then.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“But everybody here pulls their weight. You just showed me that. I can’t take something from you without giving something back.”
“You are our guest,” I repeated. “We don’t expect anything in return.”
Her eyes welled up with sudden tears.
“Joseph, you old boot,” said Fancy. She sat on the front porch, waiting for us. “You’ve monopolized Lux for far too long. Give somebody else a chance.”
“We were on a tour,” I said.
“What did he show you? The boring workshop? The chicken coop? I would have taken you to meet Dear One.”
Dear One, known to everybody else as Eleanor, was the daughter of Polly Bisbee (our childhood cook) and was Fancy’s closest friend. Dear One as in “Dear One, would you get me a cup of tea?” “Dear One, would you mind ever so much closing that window?” She’d been Fancy’s companion until my mother died, and then she became her lady’s maid. Fancy would never refer to her as a maid now. My sister had been slower to evolve than me, but eventually she had come around.
Fancy and Eleanor were not permanent residents of Greengage. In fact, they’d arrived for their annual visit just days before the earthquake. It had taken them four weeks to travel by steamship from London to New York and then another week on the train from New York to San Francisco.
“I would love to meet Dear One,” said Lux.
Fancy jumped up from her chair. “We’re off, then!”
“No, she is in need of a rest,” I said.
Lux nodded at me gratefully. She’d been too polite to turn down Fancy’s invitation, but she really did need to sit down. She looked quite pale.
“I suppose you’ve had quite a shock,” said Fancy.
“Well, you’ve had quite a shock, too,” said Lux.
Fancy was usually steadfastly upbeat, it was one of her great strengths. But this was not one of those times; she now slumped in despair. I drew my sister to me. She laid her head against my shoulder and sighed.
“Yes, I guess we have,” she said.
Dinner was a strange affair. Some people came and paid their respects to Lux; they bobbed and curtseyed and welcomed her, making me feel I was sitting next to royalty. Others avoided her like a leper, going out of their way to bypass her, walking down another row so they wouldn’t risk having to say hello.
It was terribly awkward. Twice I got up to leave and twice Martha stopped me.
“They are looking to you to set an example,” she said. “They’re nervous. They don’t know how to make sense of what’s happening. Give them some time.”
Lux was polite. She greeted everybody with the same warmth. She looked them in the eyes and shook their hands like somebody who wanted desperately to be accepted. She started on another round of I’m sorries—“Sorry for what’s befallen you,” “Sorry it hasn’t befallen me,” “Sorry I’m free and you’re not”—but I kneed her under the table and she immediately stopped.
“Sorry,” she said to me under her breath. “This is just so weird. I don’t know what to say.”
“Do something,” said Martha to me.
I stood and clinked on my glass with a knife. The room quieted.
“Listen up,” I said. “These are the facts. This is what we know. This woman, Lux, accidentally found her way here through the fog. It seems she can come and go through the fog, though we cannot.”
I couldn’t bring myself to voice the unfathomable, that according to Lux, on the other side of the fogbank it was 1975. I paused, expecting somebody to start interrogating me about it, but the room was complicit with silence. We all needed some time to grapple with this news.
“I know you want answers. You want to know what’s happening. What does this mean? Her arrival.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t think it means anything.”
This was a lie. Her arrival changed everything and we all knew it, but because we didn’t know what it really meant for us, everybody agreed to let this lie stand for now.
“Not for us, anyway. For us life goes on as it has for the past four months. Nothing has changed. We will get up in the morning and meet with our crews and put in a good day’s work, and then we will sleep, knowing we’ve earned our rest. And the next day we will wake up and do it all over again.”
“Is she staying?” Matteo asked.
I looked down at Lux.
“I’d like to stay a few days, if you’ll let me,” she said quietly, so only I could hear.
I fought to keep a neutral expression on my face, as if it didn’t matter to me whether she stayed or left.
“For a while,” I confirmed. “Treat her like one of us.”
“Yes, please,” said Lux. She got to her feet. “I don’t want any special treatment.”
Oh, but she was special; this was clear the moment she stood. Even if she wasn’t from the future, she could travel freely through the fog and we could not. She blinked once, twice, and took her seat.
I sat on the porch in the dark. I couldn’t sleep; I’d been sitting there for hours. I heard Lux before I saw her. The sound of her bare feet creeping down the stairs. The squeak of the door opening. She padded to the railing in a muslin nightgown (Fancy must have lent it to her), put her hands on the railing, arched her back, and sighed.
I cleared my throat, announcing myself, and she jumped.
“You could have told me you were there,” she said.
“My apologies,” I said.
My eyes had acclimated to the night long ago, so I took the opportunity to survey her unseen. I estimated her age as somewhere in her twenties. Her face was without wrinkles, her complexion fair but tanned by the sun. Her brown, shoulder-length hair had fallen out of its braid. She impatiently pushed her fringe to the side, exposing dark straight brows. She had a small but sturdy frame and was of medium height. I could smell Martha’s soap on her skin; it was unnerving.
“Can I have one of those?” she asked.
I gave her one of my precious cigarettes. She leaned forward and I lit it with a match. She inhaled deeply, held the smoke in her lungs and blew it out.
“Do you still think I’m mad?” she asked.
“I’m on the fence.”
“Well, how do we get you off the fence?”
“Do you have any identification?”
“Not on me.” She thought for a moment. “Everything’s at the campsite.”
“You could answer a few questions,” I said.
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Who’s the president of the United States?”
“Gerald Ford,” she said without hesitation.
“What number president is he?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Who’s the prime minister of England?”
“I have no idea. But I can tell you that in 1914, England, along with France, Russia, and Japan, will declare war on Germany. America will try and stay neutral, but finally in 1917 we’ll join the fight and help win the war, but at a terrible cost. Something like seventeen million people will die. Trench warfare. Gas. U-boats.” She shuddered. “World War I.”
“World War I?”
She looked at me calmly.
“That implies there’s a World War II.”
“From 1939 to 1945,” she said. “Something like seventy-five million casualties.”
“Dear God. World War III?”
“Not yet. But America just wrapped up a war with Vietnam.” She took another puff of her cigarette. “Oh, yeah, and a man walked on the moon.”
I grunted with skepticism.
She grinned. “I’m not pulling your leg. Neil Armstrong in 1969. Do you want to hear more? I could tell you about the Depression, about Prohibition, about the civil rights movement, about Martin Luther King, about Roe v. Wade. Abortion is legal now, by the way.”
I held up my hand. “That’s quite enough, thank you. A few minutes of quiet, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course. You’ll want to take that all in,” she said a little smugly, pleased to have put on such a convincing show.
The crickets chirped. A moth batted its wings futilely against a closed window. My mind reeled.
“Don’t you want to ask me any questions?”
“My questions were answered today when you took me on the tour,” she said.
“Are you saying you believe me?”
“No. Yes. I mean kind of. What else can I do? At some point you just have to sort of commit, right?”
“Commit to what?”
“This. Us. What’s happening. That I’m here. That you’re here. That this can’t be, and yet it is. It’s beyond the laws of nature, but until some other evidence surfaces to disprove you, I’m going to go along with all this, and maybe you’ll go along with it, too. What other choice do we have?” She shrugged.
She’d just expressed the same conclusion I’d been coming to. Continuing to mistrust each other seemed like a waste of energy, at least for now.
“Do you think we did something? To bring this on?” I asked.
“Like what? What could you have possibly done?”
She was right. We had done nothing but work hard to be self-sufficient and treat each other fairly and equitably.
“You were happy?” she asked.
“We were happy.”
Clarification: most of us had been happy. The O’Learys hadn’t been happy. Paddy’s last words? “If we stay any longer, we’ll never leave.” How right he had turned out to be.
“So. That’s not a crime. That’s what everybody wants.” She took another deep pull on the cigarette. “I have a joint back in my tent. I wish I’d brought it.”
“A joint?”
“Pot. Marijuana. Um, cannabis—I guess that’s the proper name. What do you call it?”
“Hashish.”
“Is it illegal? It’s illegal now.”
“You could mail-order maple sugar hashish candy in the Sears, Roebuck catalog.”
Lux laughed. “You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m afraid I’m not.”
She flicked the ash of her cigarette over the railing.
“Are you married? Do you have children?” I asked her, changing the subject.
She sat down in the rocking chair next to me. “I’m a widow. I live with my son, Benno. He’s five.”
She said this dryly, with very little emotion.
“My condolences.”
“Yes, well, it was a while ago.”
“Still, that must have been very difficult.”
“He was in the army. He died in the war.”
“The war with Vietnam?”
“Yes.”
“Where is your son right now?”
“He’s with my mother.”
“You live with your parents, then? Siblings as well?”
She gave me a strange look. “I live alone. Well, I have a roommate, Rhonda, but she’s barely ever home.”
“Where do your parents reside?”
“In Newport, Rhode Island.”
“Across the country? Why aren’t they with you? However do you manage on your own without help?”
She stood, walked down the stairs, and threw her cigarette in the dirt. “I manage just fine. Nobody lives with their parents anymore. Everybody leaves home. Everybody. It’s just what you do.”
This was the moment when I fully believed she was from a different time. She could relay an encyclopedia’s worth of historical facts to me; she could tell me of every scientific, mathematical, and medical advancement; she could describe the plots of award-winning novels that hadn’t yet been written, hum the tunes of unheard operas and symphonies, tell me of new planets, new cocktails, new styles of clothing—but none of it would convince me more than this simple fact. She was alone, she and her son. This would have been a very rare scenario in my time.
Lux walked back up the stairs. “I’ve got to get some sleep. What time do you wake up in the mornings?”
“Five.”
“Everybody gets up then?”
“It depends on the crew.”
“What crew will I be on?” She tipped her chin up, looking defiant, as if I were about to deny her the opportunity to be put to work.
“What crew would you like to be on?”
“Garden,” she said.
“Fine. Garden starts at seven, but the breakfast bell rings at six.”
“I’ll be up at five-thirty,” she said.
“Do you have a watch?”
“No, do you?”
“I don’t need one. I wake up the same time every day.”
“Same,” she said proudly. “See you at dawn.”
Lux (#ulink_ffd675ac-d513-5ee2-b51c-5e8acd6668d3)
I woke to the sound of something being poured, Martha filling the washbasin with hot water. Through the window I could see the first streaks of red in the sky. The sun hadn’t risen yet.
I sat up in bed. “You don’t have to do that. I can do it myself.” I didn’t want her to wait on me—it made me uncomfortable.
“It’s chilly in the mornings. You won’t be used to the cold house.”
I pulled back the covers and put my bare feet on the floor. The wood was freezing. I gave a little gasp.
Martha dragged the rag rug to the side of the bed. “That’s where it belongs, not in the middle of the room.” She scowled and I felt guilty, as if I had been the one who moved the rug, though I wasn’t.
“Joseph says you want to join the garden crew today.”
“Yes, if that’s okay. Unless I’m needed elsewhere.”
She looked impeccable, her hair swept back neatly into a bun. She wore a gray skirt and a spotlessly clean apron.
“Where you work is entirely up to you, as I’m sure Joseph explained.” She eyed my skinny ankles suspiciously. “Although it’s a busy time of year in the garden. You’ll be harvesting. It’s backbreaking, repetitive work. Kneeling. Stooping over, picking, hauling baskets to the wagon.”
“That won’t be a problem. I’m a waitress. I carry platters of food all day long. I can even carry a keg of beer up from the basement.” A pony keg, but still.
She cocked her head as if trying to imagine me with a keg of beer on my shoulder. “The water’s getting cold,” she said.
“Thank you. And next time—”
She waved dismissively at me. “Yes, yes, you’ll get your own water. Don’t worry, I have no intention of being your servant.”
I dressed in the same outfit I’d had on yesterday. Skirt, blouse, and hiking boots. When I got downstairs, I found Fancy waiting for me.
“Good morning!” she piped. “Did you sleep well?”
I hadn’t slept much at all. I’d been too revved up after my conversation with Joseph, which for some reason had left me feeling exposed. Also, I couldn’t stop thinking about Benno. Day three without him. I missed him desperately.
“I slept okay.”
“Wonderful,” said Fancy. “Let’s go to the dining hall. I’m starving.”
“Should we wait for Joseph and Martha?”
“They left ages ago,” she said, linking her arm through mine.
A few minutes after we set out, the bell rang. Families streamed out of their cottages and the dormitories emptied. Children ran ahead of their parents, dogs at their feet. Roosters crowed. Horses pushed their velvety noses into fresh hay.
I could smell the pancakes from a hundred feet away. My stomach grumbled.
“Everybody’s looking at us,” said Fancy. “At you.”
They were looking at me but something had changed since last night. Their faces seemed more open, less guarded.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” said Fancy. “How quickly something unbelievable becomes believable.”
I was thinking the very same thing. Yesterday I’d spent the day riding waves of surreality and shock. Thinking This can’t be happening. Today, just twenty-four hours later, those waves were still coming in but the time between sets was much longer. This was happening. I was here. I saw the same acknowledgment on people’s faces.
“What crew are you on?” I asked Fancy.
“Much to my brother’s dismay, I’m a flutterbudget. I just can’t seem to settle on one thing. Where are you working today?”
“The garden.”
“Oh,” she groaned. “Poor girl.”
“I chose it.”
“Mmm, let’s see how you feel about it tonight, shall we? When that lovely complexion is the color of a beet and your clothes—my clothes—are soaked through with sweat.”
“You should come with me,” I said.
“How I wish I could. I have just the perfect hat, with a lovely blue satin ribbon.” She looked at me sadly. “Alas, I’ve already committed myself to the entertainment crew.”
“The entertainment crew. Joseph didn’t mention that.”
“That’s because I’m starting it today. You’re welcome to join—I have all sorts of things planned. I thought our inaugural event would be an old-fashioned country dance. The Scottish reel, lots of lively skipping up and down in rows just like in Pride and Prejudice. Then a strings concert; as it happens, the beekeeper is a violinist and there are two cellists on the building crew. And perhaps a bimonthly lecture series. There is a great deal of untapped knowledge here at Greengage. And why, you, Lux! Oh my goodness, why haven’t I thought of you? You must be our first lecturer. You can fill us in on what we’ve missed. Tell us all about the twentieth century. Will you do it? Please say you’ll do it. Please?”
“Fancy,” said Joseph. “She hasn’t even had her tea yet.” He’d suddenly materialized beside us.
“Good heavens,” said Fancy. “Must you always be popping up like that? It’s so uncivilized, not to give a person some warning. And stop interfering. We’re the most bosom of friends already. Isn’t that right, Lux?”
Nobody had ever referred to me as a bosom friend before. I felt tears come to my eyes, which was completely ridiculous, especially under the circumstances.
“You are overwhelming her,” said Joseph, peering at me with concern.
Twice now he’d seen me tear up. What was wrong with me? Why was I so emotional here?
“I am not overwhelming her.”
“She’s not. She’s not overwhelming me,” I said, although the idea of giving a talk to 278 people made me feel faint.
Fancy squeezed my arm.
“Come on, you two,” said Joseph, leading us into the dining hall. “Fancy, make sure you eat a proper breakfast. You have a long day ahead of you, installing the new privies.”
Fancy snorted, “I will be doing no such thing.”
Martha was right. Being on the garden crew was backbreaking, repetitive work—but I loved it all the same. They started me in strawberries, me and all the kids; I guess they thought I couldn’t be trusted with proper vegetables yet. The children sat in the dirt, and for every strawberry they picked, another went into their mouths. None of them spoke to me for a while, although they did their share of staring, and then one little boy asked, “Don’t you like strawberries?” and that broke the dam of silence.
“I love strawberries,” I said.
“Then why aren’t you eating them?” asked a girl.
“Because I’m not hungry.”
“Why aren’t you hungry?”
“Because I just ate breakfast.”
“What did you have for breakfast?”
“Pancakes, just like you.”
“Do you have pancakes at your house?”
“All the time.”
“Do you have children?”
“Yes, I have a son, just about your age, maybe a little younger. His name is Benno.”
“What kind of a name is Benno?”
“It’s short for Bennett.”
“Why isn’t he with you?”
“He’s on vacation.”
“Vacation?”
“A holiday. With his grandmother.”
They looked horrified, their faces smudged with dirt, their fingers sticky with strawberry juice.
“Then why are you here? Why didn’t you go with him?”
Why, indeed? Suddenly I was hungry. I stuffed three strawberries in my mouth.
After lunch I graduated to tomato picking. Nobody spoke to me for an hour. Finally a woman who looked to be in her fifties said, “You don’t have to be so gentle.”
She was referring to the way I was handling the tomatoes. Tenderly placing them in the basket, being careful not to bruise them, which slowed my picking down quite a bit.
“They’re just going in the pot,” she explained. “Those”—she pointed a few rows away—“we baby.”
She walked over to the other row, picked a tomato, came back, and handed it to me. “Taste.”
“I don’t have a knife.”
“Just bite into it,” she instructed me.
I bit into it like an apple; juice splattered on my chin. The skin was warm. It tasted of sun and earth and rain.
“Now eat this,” she said, handing me one of the tomatoes I’d picked.
Even though it was a deep red, it had none of the depth of flavor. It didn’t explode on my tongue, it just sort of sat there.
“You see the difference? These are for canning. Those are for eating.”
“Yes.”
“Good.” She knelt down again. “My name is Ilsa.”
“Hi, Ilsa, I’m Lux.”
“I know. You don’t have to introduce yourself. Everybody knows who you are.”
My basket was nearly full. I picked more tomatoes, quickly this time, and stood. The wagon was a good quarter mile away. I arched my back and stretched, preparing for the walk. The basket weighed at least twenty pounds.
“Do you have moving pavements in San Francisco?” asked Ilsa.
“Moving pavements?”
“Sidewalks that carry you everywhere so you don’t have to walk,” she explained. “You just step on them and—whoosh!—off you go.”
This was what people in the early twentieth century thought the future would bring? I guess it was similar to me wishing that one day there’d be a tiny record player I could carry around in my pocket so I could have music wherever I went.
“Oh. God. No. That would be nice, though, wouldn’t it? There are so many hills in the city. But there is something close. Moving stairs. Escalators.”
“What about personal flying machines?” asked a man who’d been eavesdropping on our conversation.
“You mean like a car—an automobile that flies?”
He nodded.
“No, but we have commercial airlines. TWA. Pan Am. They fly hundreds of people in one airplane. You can travel from San Francisco to Boston in around five hours.”
He cried out in surprise. From then on, the rest of the afternoon flew by. I was deluged with questions. People gasped at what they heard. They also laughed and made fun. How strange. Why would anybody need to blow-dry their hair? Or use an electrified toothbrush? Or sit in front of a small screen in their living room watching something called The Rockford Files?
At the end of the day, the garden crew climbed into the empty wagon. I didn’t know what time it was, but it had to be well after six; the sun was low in the sky and the air had a hint of coolness in it. Slowly we made our way back to the dining hall. My fingernails were edged with dirt, my back was tight and my calves sore from all the bending and lifting, but I felt a kind of grounded satisfaction that I hadn’t felt in years. A pleasant ache in my solar plexus. The steady thrum that only comes from working outside.
We were packed into the wagon, sitting thigh to thigh. I now knew everybody’s name. Claudette, a six-year-old girl with a red birthmark on her neck in the shape of China, crawled into my lap, and in the ten minutes it took us to get to the dining hall, she fell asleep.
“Do you mind?” asked Ilsa.
“Not at all.” I enjoyed the weight of her head on my shoulder. It reminded me of my sweet Benno. I wondered what he was doing this very minute. How many days was it until I’d see him again? Eleven? Twelve?
“Is she yours?” I asked.
“She’s my granddaughter.”
“Oh, your daughter is here, too?”
Ilsa looked off into the distance. “She was.”
Later I’d learn that Ilsa’s daughter had left Greengage the night before the earthquake to spend a few days with her cousins in Alameda. Would Claudette ever see her mother again? No matter how enchanting a place Greengage was, what had happened to them was ghastly.
After dinner that night, when nobody was looking, I stepped into the fog. I was anxious to confirm that nothing had changed—that time was still passing regularly in my world. Once again, I heard the hum of the highway. And once again, I caught the briefest snippet of a song from a car radio. “The Hustle.” An image of Benno and me in the kitchen popped into my mind, the two of us doing the bump. The happiest of memories. He was fine. I was fine.
I would ask Joseph if I could stay a few more days.
I woke at midnight. Unable to fall back asleep, I went out on the porch. Joseph was there. We’d barely spoken at dinner, although I’d caught him looking at me a few times.
The red tip of his cigarette glowed in the dark.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” I said.
He didn’t answer.
“Can I have a puff?” I asked.
He handed the cigarette to me. I took a drag and tried to give it back to him. “Keep it,” he said. “How did it go today?”
I didn’t realize until he asked me the question how I’d been longing for him to inquire about my day.
“Good. I like the garden crew.”
“Do you?”
“You sound surprised.”
“You didn’t mind laboring in the heat for eight hours?”
“I loved it.”
“You loved it?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I doubt you’re used to this kind of life.”
What kind of life was he referring to? The kind of life where you spent the day outside, playing and working alongside people who knew you, really knew you?
“When I was a kid, my father would take me to Lapis Lake in New Hampshire,” I said. “Greengage reminds me of there.”
Joseph held his hand out for the cigarette.
I gave it back to him, surprised that he didn’t mind sharing with me.
“Were you happy at Lapis Lake?” he asked.
“I was. For a long time.”
“Until you weren’t.”
Right.
“When were you there last?”
I had to think. “Nineteen sixty-four,” I said finally.
“Absolutely not,” said my mother. “It would break your father’s heart. You’re going.” She handed me a jar of Pond’s. “By the way, just because you’ll be swimming every day doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cleanse your face properly every night.”
I tucked the Pond’s into my suitcase. “I’m only talking about going up a couple of days late. This weekend is Meg’s birthday party. Her parents are renting out the entire rec center. We’ll have the pool all to ourselves. After that I can go join Dad at the lake.”
I didn’t tell her the party was co-ed and that Meg had invited a bunch of sophomore boys.
“I can take the bus to Portsmouth on Monday and Dad can meet me there.”
“He needs your help opening up the cabin.”
“He can open it himself.”
My mother sighed.
“Please. It’s only two days. Nobody will miss me.”
“Everybody will miss you. The McKinleys. The Babbitts. They’ll be terribly disappointed if you don’t show up with your dad for Saturday night dinner. And what about that new family that bought the cabin next to the Hineses last year?”
“The Harrises,” I said.
“Yes, don’t they have a girl your age?”
Beth Harris. We’d bonded last summer. We were as opposite from each other as could be, but our differences fell away at Lapis Lake.
My mother folded a blouse. “You’ll have great fun once you get there, you always do.” She eyed my blue jean shorts. “You’re not wearing those today, are you?”
My father and I were leaving for the lake tomorrow, but today the three of us were attending the New Parents’ Reception at St. Paul’s School.
“It’s just a bunch of parents.”
“A bunch of very excited parents who are thrilled and grateful their children will be attending St. Paul’s in September, thanks to your father.” She rifled through my closet and pulled out a blue dress with a white Peter Pan collar. “This will do nicely.”
“No,” I groaned.
“I’m sorry, darling, but you’re going to have to get used to dressing conservatively. If you think you’re under a spotlight now being the dean’s daughter, wait until you’re the headmaster’s daughter.”
The headmaster of St. Paul’s was retiring and my father was the obvious choice to replace him; the board had been considering the appointment for months. He had the seniority and he was deeply committed to his job. He was popular as well. Kids adored him; they always hung out in his office. Grateful mothers sent him plates of cookies; grateful fathers, bottles of scotch at Christmas. He left the house at seven-thirty each morning and often didn’t return until seven o’clock at night. He loved his work.
“Can I bring a book?” I asked.
“That would be rude.”
“If I sit in the very back?”
“What book?”
“House of Mirth,” I lied. I was in the middle of Updike’s Rabbit, Run and couldn’t wait to get back to it.
“Fine,” she capitulated.
There were benefits to being my father’s daughter, and the moment we stepped onto campus they accrued to me. We were like celebrities. Parents called out their hellos. Many times, on our way to the chapel, people stopped us.
“Is this your daughter?”
“Yes, this is Lux,” said my father.
“Oh, she’s just lovely,” they said. “A junior, senior?”
My father looked appalled.
My mother said, “Oh, no, Lux is just entering her freshman year.”
I was breathless, thrilled they thought I was older than fourteen.
I didn’t end up reading Rabbit, Run at the New Parents’ Reception. My father, preaching the gospel of St. Paul’s School from the pulpit of the chapel, was too riveting. Like everybody else in the audience, I was swept away by the force of his charisma. I prayed for his eyes to fall on me, to choose me, to mark me as special. But foolishly I’d chosen to sit in the back row. It was impossible for him to pick me out in the sea of blue dresses.
At least that’s what I told myself; I wasn’t ready to admit the truth—I was afraid my shine had worn off for him. Things had become awkward and forced between us over the past year. Most of my friends already had that distance with their fathers, it was built into their relationships; they’d always been much closer with their mothers. But in my house, it was the opposite. It was my father and I that were inseparable. His darling girl; that’s what he called me. He understood me—his bright, easily bored, passionate, underdog-defending, in-need-of-large-doses-of-physical-activity-and-changes-of-scenery daughter. And more important than understanding me, he liked me. He was most proud when I took the road less traveled by.
It wouldn’t be exaggerating to say I lived for the look of delight and surprise in his eyes when I accomplished something out of the ordinary. Beating him at chess. Reading the unabridged version of Anna Karenina when I was ten. Starting a campfire with nothing but a flint and a knife.
But now it seemed our father and daughter skins were growing too small. I still craved his attention and approval, but he gave it more sparingly. Our long, rambling conversations about everything and anything—the speed of light, the Cuban missile crisis, how many minutes on each side to grill a perfect medium-rare steak—had petered out, replaced with the most quotidian of inquiries: Is Gunsmoke on tonight? Is it supposed to snow tomorrow? When’s the last time the grass was cut?
It was mostly my fault. I’d created the distance. Or puberty had done it for me. Along with my new body (Breasts! Hair! Hips! Pimples!) came disorientation. What was charming behavior when I was a girl wasn’t always so charming at fourteen. Also, my adventurous nature didn’t set me apart anymore. The rest of my friends had finally caught up with me. Not only were they doing the daredevil things I’d always done, but they were doing those things on a grander, if more subversive, scale. They lied, they sneaked around, they hid their real lives away from their parents. They said they were going to the beach; instead they took the bus to Providence. They said they were sleeping over at a friend’s house; instead they spent the night on the beach with a boy. I was a good girl, I still asked permission to do practically everything, but for the first time in my life my father had started to question my judgment. He’d loved my precociousness when I was young. He’d let me roam free my entire life, in fact he’d encouraged it. Now, just when I was on the cusp of truly being able to handle the independence, he wanted to shut me in.
More and more we stood on opposite shores, or, worse than that, he wasn’t on the shore at all. Instead it was my mother who’d taken his place, waving at me from across the sea that separated parent from child, imploring me to wash my face and moisturize every night.
“I’m going to miss you two,” my mother said the next morning, watching me zip up my suitcase.
Jeans. Shorts. Shirts. Bathing suit. Underwear. Sneakers. What was I forgetting?
The phone rang downstairs.
“I’ve got it!” shouted my father.
“Why don’t you come with us?” I asked.
She plumped up the pillows on my bed. “Me, sleeping on that mildewed mattress? All those bugs? Rats running around in the eaves at night and God knows what else?”
Lapis Lake was no Lake Winnipesaukee. It was a dozen or so uninsulated fishing cabins clustered around a small lake. It was at the base of Mount Fort, a tiny mountain, more of a hill, really. My grandfather Harry, who worked as a pulper at the paper mill in Rumford, Maine (until he died of lung cancer at forty-eight), had made the exodus to the lake every summer, as had a group of other mill families. When my grandfather’s generation passed, the cabins had been handed down to my father’s generation, who in turn brought their sons and daughters every August. Or daughter, in my case.
My mother had gone with my father to Lapis Lake a few times, but after I was born she’d stopped. She wasn’t a snob (she sent Christmas cards to all the other lake families every year), she just wasn’t outdoorsy. She much preferred to stay home in Newport. When Dad and I were gone, she met her friends for drinks and dinner. She waded through thick books, ate at odd hours, and went to the movies. She had no problem keeping herself busy.
“I’ve never seen a rat,” I said. There were, however, plenty of mice.
There was a loud thud from the kitchen and my father yelled, “Jesus!”
We ran down the stairs and found him in his jeans and undershirt, barefoot, coffee and broken pieces of mug all over the floor.
My father’s left leg was almost two inches shorter than his right; he usually wore his lift from the moment he got out of bed to the moment he climbed back in at night. This structural defect (he referred to it that way, as if he were a building) had prevented him from participating in any kind of athletics when he was a boy, and when he was a man it had kept him out of the war. It hadn’t barred him from academia, though. He’d gotten his undergraduate degree in English at the University of Maine and his graduate degree in public policy at URI. Education was everything to him. It was the only path up and out.
Now thirty-nine (with lifts for every kind of footwear imaginable, including his slippers), my father was confident and handsome, his dark hair Brylcreemed, his face smelling of Pinaud-Clubman aftershave. He didn’t have a belly like lots of the other fathers. He boxed at McGillicutty’s gym in Middletown three times a week to stay in shape.
“What a mess,” my father said.
“I’ll get it.” I grabbed a dish towel and wiped up the spill.
“Who was that on the phone?” asked my mother.
“Manny. He’ll be here to cut the grass on Thursday.”
“You already told me that,” said my mother.
“Did I?”
My father smoothed the hair back from my mother’s face, tipped up her chin with his finger, and looked into her eyes. When my father turned the spotlight of his gaze on you, it was like you were the only person alive.
It was a quiet ride north. My father and I often didn’t speak when driving to the camp; it was a transitional time and we honored it. But this silence felt oppressively heavy. Had my mother told him I wanted to come late?
“Are you okay?” I asked when we rolled through the New Hampshire tolls.
He shook a cigarette out of its pack. “I’m fine. Just tired.”
“Looking forward to getting to the lake?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He punched the cigarette lighter in.
An hour later we turned onto Rural Road 125. The woods were lush and green.
“Smell that?” said my father, inhaling deeply. “That is the smell of freedom.”
And dead mice, I thought as we walked into the cabin.
“Christ,” said my father. He put down his suitcase and immediately began opening windows and shutters. “Get me a bag.”
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