To See the Moon Again (6 page)

She nearly lost heart that day. She imagined a drag race, with her car stalled at the starting line while Jeremiah's and everyone else's sped around and around the track.

Time passed, not much, and then one day she was sitting in the living room of the stone house, reading through one of Jeremiah's stories again, this time penciling in a few changes, as if she were a magazine editor and someone she didn't know had submitted this piece.

•   •   •

A
VAN
swung into the library parking lot now and pulled into the spot next to Julia's Buick. The back door slid open and four children clambered out, all of them holding armfuls of books. A woman got out from the driver's side and ambled toward the library, the children trailing after her, all talking at once. One of them, a skinny boy with shaggy white-blond hair, was hopping on one foot.

What's wrong with you? Settle down! Can't you just walk like all the normal children in the world do?
—it was amazing how words you hadn't heard for almost half a century could come back so clearly. Starting with his first step, Jeremiah's constant motion had been only one of their father's many complaints against him.

Julia took a piece of paper out of her purse and looked at it. On it were written the titles of the movie and the books she was going to pick up here at the library. It was getting stuffy in the car, so she opened the door. But still she didn't get out.

The woman and three of the children were almost to the door of the library now, but the towheaded boy was down on all fours beside the broken sidewalk, peering into a crack, his books strewn about him on the ground.

Keep up! Watch what you're doing! Why can't you stick to one thing?

Julia suddenly wondered if over the years the roots of the oak tree had gradually applied more and more pressure until one day the sidewalk had all at once broken apart with a sound like a discharging cannon, or whether it had happened silently. She wondered if even now the cracks were still growing, if someone could monitor them around the clock and, with measuring tools, could actually chart them widening, lengthening.

•   •   •

A
FTER
she had been through Jeremiah's story several times that day, revising a word here, adding a transitional phrase there, changing the title, she had looked up from the sofa where she sat in the living room. On the coffee table in front of her was a trial issue of a new regional literary magazine titled
Green River
that had come in the mail the day before. She decided on the spot to submit the story there.

She typed it from the handwritten pages, very carefully, and proofread it multiple times. Up to the end, she planned to submit the story with the same byline he had neatly printed at the top of every page—
J. Frederickson
. Or at least that was what she told herself now. She had prepared the mailing envelope, thinking about other magazines she could try if this one didn't want it. As it turned out,
Green River
did want it, and they published it without making a single change.

What she couldn't remember was what had gone through her mind in the seconds right before printing off the final copy, the exact moment when she lifted her hands above the computer keyboard and added another name to the end of
J. Frederickson
to make it
J. Frederickson Rich
.

Maybe she had been plotting to do this all along, or maybe the thought came to her at the very end in a rush of pragmatic justifications piling up one on top of the other:
Contemporary magazines prefer to publish stories by living writers
. And
After all, this would be in a trash heap in Wyoming by now if I hadn't ransomed it from Lulu
. And
My editing made it what it is
. And
Jeremiah wouldn't care who got the credit
. And
Tenure requires publishing
. And, of course,
No one will ever know the difference
. All of which missed the point completely.

•   •   •

A
N
old woman was slowly exiting the library using a cane. In her other hand she carried a quilted tote, bulging with books. She crept to a car in a nearby handicapped space and proceeded to get her books, her cane, and herself inside. It struck Julia that here was a woman of courage whose limitations didn't stop her from venturing forth to get what she wanted. Yet she defrauded no one in the process.

Julia sighed and glanced down again at the paper in her hand. One of the titles she had written down was another how-to book that a colleague in the English department had recommended—
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
, by Stephen King, of all people. So now she would go inside, check it out, take it home, and read it. She put one foot out of the car. She couldn't begin to count the number of how-to books she had read, always delaying the action of writing for a little more preparation.

She got out and headed for the entrance, thoroughly peeved that she had allowed herself to be trapped once again in all these depressing memories. Perhaps they had served one purpose, however, by increasing her resolve to avoid Carmen. For how could you bear to look at a child, knowing you had stolen from her father?

L
IKE
P
RECIOUS
C
ARGO

Three more days passed without incident. No dreaded phone calls or knocks on the door of the stone house, at least not while Julia was home. She began to hope that Carmen had already come and gone or had given up her plan to visit, had decided instead to get back on the boat with her friend and perhaps sail to South America.

Julia gave her last exam, finished reporting her grades, and then on Friday afternoon put on her black academic cap and gown to march in the graduation procession. The faculty members flanked the students as they filed into the auditorium, then parted from them and sat on the platform in rows facing the graduates and their families.

Julia found herself listening and watching more attentively this time, knowing she would be absent from the ceremony next year. It came to her that her sabbatical was a rare opportunity in more ways than one, a warm-up exercise for retirement. She found her senses on high alert—the trumpet fanfare sounded louder than usual, the colors of the flags borne in at the head of the procession seemed brighter, the excitement more palpable.

Usually during the conferring of degrees that followed the commencement address, Julia listened carefully to each graduate's name as it was announced. Sometimes, just to have something to do, she even checked them off one at a time in the printed program, adding asterisks beside the names of students she had taught. Today, however, she had no interest in that. Already she felt a detachment from campus proceedings, as if observing from a great height.

She knew it was due to more than her imminent sabbatical. Part of it was a recurring sense of dismay that time could have swept her up and so quickly deposited her at the end of another school year, seated here with other gray, stodgy professors. But even more than that, she felt somehow shaken by the sight of so many happy faces in the audience. The graduates, yes, but more than these, the parents and grandparents. It was a line of thought she didn't want to allow, a box she wanted to keep the lid on.

•   •   •

I
N
Julia's youth, parenthood was always the cornerstone of whatever future she imagined for herself, in spite of the fact that her own parents did little to cast it in a positive light. Though she might become other things, too, she knew she would surely be the mother of children. Maybe it was only an extension of her lifelong impulse to revise the unsatisfactory, but regardless of its source, it was a persistent dream—to be half of a happy team of parents such as those she saw on television or occasionally in the homes of neighbors and friends, sometimes even in public places among strangers.

And it was at the beginning of graduate school that she at last began to feel that the dream might be within reach. She met a boy—college students were still referred to as boys and girls in those days—in a class called Research and Writing. They started dating, then going steady—another obsolete term. Victor Hart was his name, and he was working toward a doctoral degree in history. At some point they began to talk of marriage.

Victor was smart, not only in the global sense of understanding how the universe was put together but also in subtle, intuitive ways often thought to be a woman's purview. He knew in an instant when she was troubled, for example, had an instinct for whether silence or coaxing was called for, was a dispenser of the understated but perfect compliment:
I see the world reflected in your eyes, Your voice is like a fresh clear morning, You create solace when you enter a room, I admire your truthfulness.
But it was her truthfulness that fell short in the end. She let him go, or rather sent him away, without ever telling him why.

A few days after defending her dissertation, on her way from Texas to her new teaching position in South Carolina, she had stopped at her parents' home in Alabama, and all was destroyed in a flash. The Christmas wedding she and Victor had talked about never came to pass. He called, he wrote, he tried to see her, but she shut him out. She couldn't marry, she told him. Not now, not ever. No, there was nothing to explain; she had simply changed her mind. She never breathed a word about what had happened to her in Alabama.

When she did marry, years later and against her better judgment, it was not Victor. Matthew Rich was the man she married, though not the man she loved. And not the man to whom she bore children. That part of marriage never happened.

At unexpected times Victor still came to mind. She remembered meals they had cooked together, books they had read, concerts they had attended. She knew he had moved back to his home state of California, for she had read an item in an alumni newsletter years ago:
Victor Hart lives in Zion Park, CA, where he chairs the history department at South Chester University. His wife, Laura, is a systems analyst.

Julia wasn't sure what a systems analyst was, but she wondered what kind of woman Laura Hart was, whether she had given Victor children. Sometimes she wondered if Victor ever thought about the girl named Julia Frederickson he had once claimed to love, the creator of solace with the reflecting eyes and the fresh, clear voice, whose truthfulness he admired.

•   •   •

A
S
she was exiting the auditorium, Marcy called her name. Julia turned around and waited for her. Marcy already had her cap off. “Am I glad that's over. Good speech, though, and so
short
! Remember the year that old fogy went on forever and then started over at the beginning of his speech? It was like he was in a loop he couldn't get out of.” She was trying to fluff her hair. “I hate these caps. Ring around the hairdo.”

The lawns were already flooding with graduates and their families, everyone laughing, posing for snapshots, giving high fives. Some of the teachers posted themselves at certain locations every year after graduation so that students could find them, introduce them to their parents, have pictures taken with them. Julia had never taken such a chance, however, for she had no confidence that anyone would come by. She and Marcy agreed on this point and usually made plans to go somewhere to eat as soon as they could take off their regalia and get away from campus.

As they walked toward Simmons Hall together, Marcy described what the other teachers seated on her row were doing during the ceremony. Seated farther back than Julia, those on Marcy's row could get away with more. Julia caught only snatches of what she was saying—someone was working a Sudoku puzzle, someone else was reading a paperback book. No doubt another was texting, someone else dozing—all the same predictable back-row behaviors the younger teachers either had picked up from their students or had never outgrown themselves. In previous years, Julia had felt indignant over such reports, but today she could muster nothing beyond indifference.

In her office she removed her hairpins and took off her cap, then her robe. She laid her cap back in the bottom drawer of her file cabinet and hung her robe on the coat hook behind her door, where it would wait until she needed it again.

She was touching up her hair when Marcy appeared again with an armful of books and folders, her computer bag slung over one shoulder. “All set? You're riding with me this time. I'll dump this stuff in the backseat.”

Julia started to argue but changed her mind. Riding with Marcy, though always an exercise in patience, would necessitate a trip back to campus to get her car, which would give her a good reason to return to her office. She thought she might spend some time here this evening after they ate—a sort of private observance to close the school year and usher in her sabbatical.

It was almost four thirty by the time they made their way through the campus traffic and were finally seated in a place called Sticky Fingers in downtown Greenville, a drive of some thirty minutes, during which Marcy sprang it on Julia that this was to be her treat—an end-of-year, beginning-of-sabbatical, I'll-miss-you celebration.

Though not a sentimental person, Julia suddenly realized that she would look back fondly on this outing with her friend. For years she had taken Marcy for granted, had even been annoyed with her on a regular basis, but now it struck her that she would miss seeing her, eating with her, hearing her stories and gossip.

As a friend, Marcy deserved more credit than Julia gave her. She made few demands and not only excused small slights but seemed to have no memory of them afterward. Further, she was clearly bright, though she seemed to think she had been hired at Millard-Temple only by some stroke of luck. She often expressed wonder that someone with Julia's mind would stoop to be her friend. “Don't say things like that,” Julia had told her more than once. “You're the one who knows Brit Lit inside out.”

But Marcy would always laugh and counter with something like “What I know about Brit Lit could maybe fill a demitasse, but don't ask me anything about any other kind of lit. I'm the one who thought Hiawatha was a girl, remember.”

They continued to look at the menu after the waitress took their drink orders, Marcy reading aloud and exclaiming over the various items. By now Julia was already being reminded that Marcy's cheerfulness was hard to take for long stretches. Somehow she willed herself to relax, however. She was in no hurry. The more time here, the less time at home. She faded in and out of Marcy's outflow of talk, occasionally providing an answer to a question or filling a pause with a brief remark.

At one point Marcy stopped, slapped the table on both sides of her plate of ribs, and said, “Shoot, girl, I'm going to miss you next year! Who's going to listen to me? Larry's going to miss you, too, I'll tell you—he'll be the one who has to sit through all my saved-up words at the end of the day. Poor guy, he'll be begging for the condensed edition!” Larry was Marcy's husband, about whom Julia knew more than she cared to. Most of it was good, however, for according to Marcy, Larry was “a husband to die for.”

Afterward they walked all the way down Main Street to the Liberty Bridge, a cantilevered affair over the Reedy River. They stopped in a few of the shops along the way and got ice cream at one of them. When Marcy dropped her off by her car back at the college almost three hours later, Julia allowed an awkward hug before she opened the door to get out. Marcy put a hand on her arm. “Hey, kiddo, you seem a little down. You going to be okay?”

Julia nodded. “Oh, sure, I'll be fine.”

“It's been a hard year for you,” Marcy said. “You deserve some time off.” She cocked her head. “So, what are you going to do with yourself?”

They had been over this ground before, but only in general terms. “Oh, a little of this and that,” Julia said.

Marcy waited a moment to see if there was more, then said, “Well, I'll tell you what I'd do if I had a year off. I'd go back to Kansas and spend a whole month in the town where I grew up. I'd drive by my old house at least once a day and visit my old schools and the grocery store and the library and the church and the park and my granddaddy's barber shop and all the rest of it. I'd relive my whole childhood, right up to the day I got married and had to start being a boring old adult.” She laughed. “How about you—you going back home for a little bit?”

The question only proved how little Marcy knew about her, though, in all fairness, it more accurately proved how little Julia had shared with her. She shook her head. “No, I won't be doing that. Nobody's there anymore.”

Marcy smiled at her. “Well, if you need anything, you'll holler, won't you? Don't be a stranger. Keep in touch, okay? I'll sure be lonesome eating by myself in the cafeteria every day. Can we have lunch together sometimes?”

Julia felt suddenly very tired. Talkative people wore her out, especially when so much of the talk was in the form of questions. She nodded. “Sure, I'll be around. Give me a call.”

“I'll do it!” Marcy said. “Bye now, girlfriend! Don't forget me! Have fun!” She waved, blew a kiss, and as she pulled away gave several toots of her horn. Julia watched her turn the corner and head toward the front gate. Such an innocent soul, Marcy. It was amazing that she had such a friend.

After Marcy's car disappeared from sight, Julia went inside Simmons Hall and sat in her office with the blinds open until she could see night falling over the campus. She left the light off so as not to attract attention, in case anyone else happened to be in the building on the evening of graduation day. Presently she heard the slam of a door down the hall, then laughter, followed by “I'm so out of here!” And then all was quiet for a long time.

At last she rose from her desk, walked to the door, and took a long look around her office. In the months to come, she knew she would think of it often, as a familiar land where she had once lived and one to which she longed to return. Out in the hall she tested the doorknob to make sure it was locked before heading down the dark hallway.