Valley of the Moon (24 page)

B
efore Friar shut the door behind him, I caught a glimpse of Joseph sitting by Martha's bedside. They were talking softly. This was a good sign.

“She's doing much better,” Friar said to me.

“Can I see her?”

“Maybe later. Why don't you go get some lunch and come back.”

Lunch? What happened to breakfast? “What time is it?”

“Nearly three.”

I'd been in the waiting room for six hours? It felt like only twenty minutes had passed.

“No, thank you.” I wasn't moving until I knew Martha was all right.

Martha's fever didn't rise. By the evening she was sitting up and drinking broth. Finally I was allowed into the examination room.

“Tell me again what I said?” Martha was asking Joseph.

“You asked me to get Twining's from Poppe's. You said Jake had set it aside for you.”

Roses bloomed on her cheeks. She looked like a flaxen-haired Snow White.

“Goodness. You must have thought me a lunatic.”

“I thought you were joking,” he said.

I stood there quietly by the door, suffused with happiness at the sight of the two of them conversing like normal.

Martha noticed me. “Lux,” she said. She motioned me to the bed.

She reached out her hand. Her palm was dry, but her skin felt warm. The last little bit of fever. “You're still here.”

“I had to make sure—” My throat throbbed.

I wanted to tell her how much she meant to me. That knowing she loved me and believed in me gave me courage back out in the world. But all I managed to squeak out was, “I'm so glad I'm here.”

“You love Greengage?” she asked.

“I do.”

“More than home?”

I didn't answer, but I didn't have to. We all knew the truth.

“You can live the same sort of life in San Francisco, you know that, don't you?” she said.

I shook my head. “I don't think so. It's not possible, it's—”

“Tell me. Why are you so happy in Greengage?”

I shrugged. “Because I feel like I have a place here. I'm part of a community.”

“And because you're in service to something larger than yourself,” said Martha.

“I guess so. Yes.”

“So what are you going to do about that?” asked Martha.

“Keep coming to Greengage?” I said slowly.

“No, that is not the answer,” said Martha. She yawned and turned to Joseph. “I'm so tired.” She looked at him bewilderingly, and then suddenly her back arched.

“Friar!” shouted Joseph.

Her fingers and toes curled up. Her limbs grew rigid. She bucked on the bed.

Friar ran into the room. “She's seizing.”

Joseph cupped Martha's face in his hand, murmuring, “It's all right, my love. It's all right.”

“Hold her arms, Joseph, and you hold her legs, Lux,” said Friar.

I threw my upper body across her calves. It took all my weight to keep her still on the mattress. Friar placed a cotton cloth in her mouth so she wouldn't bite her tongue.

The one terrible moment Joseph and I had spoken about? We were in it. Pinned fast. Unable to escape.

Finally Martha stopped writhing. The room was filled with an overly sweet smell, like pears. Friar took her temperature: 105.4.

Joseph cradled an unconscious Martha in his arms. I don't know how long we sat there before she came to. It was like watching somebody rise from the bottom of a lake.

Her flesh was searing hot. The whites of her eyes yellow.

“Tell Fancy to shut the window. A storm's coming,” she said.

A few seconds later, she was gone.

It was stunning how fast life could change. How the solid ground that was your long-held, never-questioned beliefs could reveal itself to be nothing but shale and crumble into dust.

Joseph pressed Martha's small body to his chest and began to keen. It was an involuntary sound, ripped from him. A wail of disbelief and grief, so private and piercing I had to look away.

Through the open window, I saw the full moon hanging high in the sky.

Friar tracked my gaze, glanced at his pocket watch, and his face grew pale.

“What time is it?” I whispered.

He shook his head sadly and I had my answer. It was well after midnight; I'd stayed through the Greengage full moon. The roulette wheel was spinning. The tiny ball of my fate was skittering around, and I had no idea where it would land.

Time had already begun to speed up on the other side of the fog.

M
y car wasn't in the parking lot. Filled with dread, I dug some change out of my wallet and called Rhonda on the payphone. No answer. I called Doro and the Patels. They weren't home either. Then I saw an eight-by-ten piece of paper taped up on the side of the phone booth.

Have You Seen This Woman?
It was a photo of me at Stinson Beach. On that day Rhonda and I had taken Benno to the beach, but it had been too windy to fly our dime-store kite. Minutes after Rhonda snapped the photo, we'd packed our things and gone back to the city.

The notice had my height, weight, age, and hair color.

Last seen August 2nd. If you have information please call 415-289-3434.
Rhonda's number.

Desperate, I called Seven Hills. Mike answered in his familiar South Boston accent.

“Mike?”

“Speakin'.” He didn't recognize my voice.

“Mike, it's Lux.”

“
Lux.
For fuck's sake. Lux. Everybody's been looking for you. We thought—we thought. Goddamn it.”

I started crying.

“Okay, okay. Calm down. Take a deep breath. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

He paused, waiting for my answer. I couldn't get any words out.

“Jesus. Are you in a safe place? Lux, tell me you're in a safe place. Say yes or no.”

“Yes,” I managed to squeak.

“Okay, good. Where are you?”

“In a parking lot.”

“Where?”

“Valley of the Moon. Jack London State Park.”

“Okay, sit tight. I'm coming to get you.”

“Wait, wait, Mike?”

“What, darlin'?” He'd never called me darlin' before. I'd heard him call other waitresses darlin', but never me.

“What's the date?”

“August thirty-first—”

I started weeping again with relief. Benno had probably just come back from Newport. He hadn't even started school yet.

“Nineteen eighty.”

It took a few seconds for it to sink in. I'd been gone a year.

Mike dropped me off at 428 Elizabeth Street. We'd barely spoken on the ride home and I was grateful he hadn't interrogated me. I stared out the window trying to think of what I was going to say. How I was going to explain where I'd been.

“Someone's in there?” Mike asked. “You're not gonna be alone, right?”

“Rhonda.” I could see the lights on in her apartment.

He reached over me and opened the car door. “You be good, Lux.” He gave me a sad smile.

I knocked on Rhonda's door. I could hear the TV and Penny singing to herself.

“It's open, Sunite,” Rhonda shouted. She thought I was Mrs. Patel.

The
Jetsons
were on. Penny waved as if she'd just seen me yesterday: she was three now, her baby fat nearly gone. Rhonda was folding laundry in the kitchen.

“It's me,” I said in a wobbly voice.

Rhonda took a step backward in shock. “There you are,” she said calmly. She didn't want Penny to see her reaction.

I walked into the kitchen and closed the door behind me. Rhonda, a pillowcase in her hand, stared at me.

“What the fuck, Lux.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm so sorry.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“I got—stuck. In Greengage. It was an accident. I didn't mean to stay through the full moon. I didn't, I swear.”

“Oh my God. Are you fucking serious? You can't imagine. Oh my fucking God.”

She came around the table and hugged me. The familiar scent of her perfume, Charlie, incited a fresh round of tears.

“Christ, Lux,” she murmured, but it wasn't an admonishment, it was more of a
Thank God you're safe.
Finally I pulled away from her and sat down. I could see she was crying now, too. It was hard for me to meet her eyes and even harder to ask the question.

“Where's Benno?”

She looked down at the table guiltily.

“Jesus, Rhonda, tell me. Is he all right?” I cried.

“I tried to keep him here with me, I swear to you, I did. Ginger was okay with it. He could have shared a room with Penny, she has bunk beds.” She chewed the inside of her lip. “He's not here. Your father insisted Benno stay in Newport. He never came home. After you didn't.” She couldn't bring herself to say it.

After I didn't come back.

Rhonda explained what had happened. When I hadn't returned, they'd gotten the police involved and a formal search had ensued. My car had been in the Jack London State Park lot, and all Rhonda knew was that Greengage was in the Valley of the Moon. They'd scoured the valley and all of Sonoma County, but there was no sign of the farm anywhere.

“That's when I started to believe you about Greengage,” she said. “I kept your secret, but it was damn hard, Lux.” She shook her head, tears welling. “I mean, why didn't you tell me?”

“I did tell you,” I said. “Over and over again.”

“You're right. You did. I didn't listen. It was just so crazy.”

I reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I don't blame you. Nobody would believe in Greengage unless they saw it.”

She nodded. “I'm your best friend. I should have come with you. I should have at least tried.”

“You didn't tell anybody?” I asked.

“No. I stuck to my story. I may have played up the commune bit. Don't be mad at me. I had to. Nothing else would have made sense. Your father flew out when the formal search ended, and he hired a private detective, but that went nowhere.”

I couldn't think about my father. Not now.

“What did they tell Benno? What does he think? Does he think I'm—
dead
?”

Rhonda gave me the most miserable look, and I had the answer to my question. Of course. It was even worse than him thinking I was dead; he thought I'd abandoned him.

I put my head in my arms, convulsing in sobs.

Alarmed, Penny pushed open the kitchen door with her chubby hand and waddled over to me. She stuck her face into mine.

“Lux sad? Lux cryin'?”

Her face scrunched up with empathy. She deliberated for a moment and then smoothed my hair. “Don't worry, noodle,” she crooned.

That was what Rhonda said to her when she got a splinter or fell off the swings at the park. I pulled her toward me. She smelled of my past, of powder and Johnson's baby shampoo.

Benno was ten now.

“I've got to go to Newport. Tonight,” I said to Rhonda.

“Uh-huh. So what's your plan? You're just going to waltz in like Rip Van Winkle and say, ‘Hello, I'm back from the dead'?” she asked.

“Oh God. What am I going to do? Should I call?”

“No, you should think about what you're going to say first. How you're going to explain where you've been for a year.”

I gulped painfully. My throat was raw from crying. “I didn't just stay for no reason.”

Rhonda waited for an explanation.

“Martha, Joseph's wife, died the night I was supposed to come home. It was sudden. One minute she was fine, the next she was having a seizure. I couldn't just leave. I mean, we were trying to save her—”

“You knew Martha well? You were close?”

“She was like a sister to me.”

“Oh, Lux. I'm so sorry,” Rhonda said.

Penny had gone back to the living room. She knocked over a tower of blocks—they clattered to the floor and she clapped her hands joyously and whispered to herself, “Again.” That had been Benno's favorite word when he was Penny's age.
Again, again, again
.

“How am I going to explain where I've been? They looked for Greengage, they know it's not there.”

“Maybe you could tell them the community moves around. Say you got swept up. It's like a cult. You went on the road with them. They brainwashed you but finally you came to your senses and got out.”

“But they're not a cult. And it's my fault I stayed, not theirs.”

“Look, if you want to get Benno back, then I think that's your only choice.”

My apartment was exactly as I'd left it, only cleaner. Rhonda told me my father had hired a maid to come once a month and he'd continued paying the rent. He'd also stocked the cupboards with canned and dry goods.

This made me feel even guiltier. How would I ever face him? It would have been better if he'd just let my apartment go to shit. I didn't deserve to have people keeping my home fires lit. And the fact that it was my father who'd kept vigil, the most unlikely person to be looking out for me, was stupefying.

I showered and then crawled into bed. My flight left at six in the morning. I hadn't called home; I couldn't bring myself to do it. Rhonda was going to phone once I was in the air and let my parents know I was on my way.

The next day my taxi barreled down I-95. I sat in the backseat with the windows open. The closer I got to Newport, the more panicked I became. Labor Day weekend. The traffic was backed up half a mile to the tolls on the bridge. We inched alongside cars filled with teenagers and families. On weekends Newport's population doubled. They came for the beaches, to tour the mansions, and to party. The restaurants and bars on Thames Street and Bowen's Wharf would already be packed, the line for Dairy Queen dozens of people long.

My parents lived in a middle-class neighborhood. Not glamorous by any means, no historical society placards on the clapboards, but well-maintained houses, the gutters clean, the driveways re-tarred like clockwork every ten years. Houses on my street rarely changed hands, and when the taxi pulled up and I saw the blue light of the TV in the house next door to ours (that TV had been on twenty-four hours a day since I was a girl), I was bowled over with nostalgia. Nothing, nothing had changed.

“You're late,” said my father when I walked in the door.

That was an understatement.

He and my mother were sitting side by side on the sofa.

“Benno?” I gasped.

My mother got up and embraced me. I held myself stiffly against her, not deserving of her affection.

“Benno's not here,” she said. “He went to see
The Empire Strikes Back
with his friend Billy. He'll be back in a while. We thought it was best if he was out of the house when you arrived. Give us time to catch up.” She stepped back and gave me the once-over. “You look starved. Did they have you on some sort of a special diet? Were you even allowed to eat?”

How could she be talking about diets? I was so desperate to see Benno—I couldn't think of anything else.

My father looked at me like a stranger, dry-eyed and emotionless. “Did you contact the police?”

“I haven't had time yet. I came straight here.”

“You'll have to tell them everything about this Greengage. Where they are. How they operate. Were there others trapped there like you? Other outsiders?”

“No, it was just me,” I said, cringing at the word
trapped
.

“Just you? Really? You're the only one they recruited?”

I thought of Joseph, cradling Martha in his arms. The animal sound he'd made as he wept.

“I wasn't recruited. I—joined. Voluntarily.”

My father gave me a stony look. “I suggest you leave out the ‘voluntarily' part when you speak to the police.”

“But then they made you stay, right?” asked my mother. “You wanted to come back, but they wouldn't let you.”

“It's not that simple, Mom. They didn't force me to stay, I could have gone, but I didn't want to.” I was trying to have it both ways. A little lie and a little truth.

My mother whispered, “You could have come back?”

“No, no, no, that's not what I meant. Let me try and explain. Being with them, being there—”

“Where?” interrupted my father. “Exactly where were you? We searched the Valley of the Moon, every square inch of it. There were no encampments, no buildings, nothing. Those woods were empty.”