Valley of the Moon (26 page)

“I'm sorry,” said my mother.

“How is he?”

“He's well. He's great!” I heard a door squeak open and shut and I knew she'd walked into the pantry with the phone. “Honestly, it's been very difficult since you left,” she whispered. “He doesn't want to talk about what happened.”

“He's furious with me, isn't he?”

“I think it's more like shock. You have to give him some space.”

“Should I not call?”

“No, you should call. He may not want to talk to you for a while, but believe me, it will mean a lot to him that you make the effort. He's got big ears. I'm sure he's out there in the living room listening right now.”

The pantry door squeaked open again. “Okay, I'll be sure to tell him. I'm so glad you got home okay. Yes, yes. You take care, too. Bye now.”

She hung up the phone.

“How fast can you type?” asked the recruiter.

“Seventy words per minute.”

“How far did you get in math?”

“Straight A's in almost every math class from elementary through high school. St. Paul's in Newport, Rhode Island—I can get the transcripts if you want.”

“And where did you attend college?”

I clutched the handles of my patent leather bag nervously. I'd borrowed a suit from Rhonda and it was too snug across the chest. The heels were from my mother, a birthday gift. “Every woman should own a pair of black pumps,” she'd said.

“I didn't go to college.”

“Junior college?”

“No.”

She scribbled on the pad. “With your background and education, you're well suited for secretarial work. Or perhaps sales. Have you ever worked retail? I have something in the lingerie department at Macy's. All employees get a twenty percent discount, not just in their department but store-wide.”

She eyed my ill-fitting suit compassionately, and that's when I knew I had a chance. She'd probably risen up the ladder herself over the years, sat in plenty of interviews like the one I was currently in and been told the same thing: you're only good enough to be a secretary or salesgirl. The placard on her desk read
MS. HENNESSEY
. Either she wasn't married or she was a feminist, both of which would work in my favor.

I sat forward in my chair. “Look, Ms. Hennessey, I don't have a college education, that's right. But I'm really smart, and I'm a fast learner, and I don't give up. I promise you that. All I need is a chance, please. I can't afford to be in a dead-end job. I need a job with a future. I have a son. His name is Benno. He's ten. I'm a single mother.”

Ms. Hennessey took off her glasses and looked at me with kind eyes. “I understand. Things happen sometimes that are out of your control and you find yourself—well, you find yourself in the last place you ever expected you'd be.” She smiled. “Let me see what I can do.”

When I got home, the red light on the answering machine was blinking. I had an interview for a teller position at Baytelco Credit Union on Wednesday.

A credit union! Practically a bank! Wait until I told Joseph! Without his and Martha's support, I never would have dared to ask Ms. Hennessey if there was something better out there for me.

Oh God, Joseph. What had the last week been like for him? Had there been a funeral? Had he given a eulogy? Did he go straight back to work, in need of the distraction of physical labor? Or had he locked himself away in the parlor, the shades drawn, smoking the last of his cigarettes? It killed me that I wasn't there. That I couldn't speak with him, sit with him, help him feel his way into this new life.

I said a silent prayer.

Joseph. I'm here. I'm here.

I called Newport in the late morning, knowing the house would be empty. I was desperate. I'd called home every night for the past three nights, and every night Benno was mysteriously “out.” I wanted to leave a message that required nothing out of him. He could choose to listen to it or, with one punch of a button, erase it. Erase
me
. It was up to him.

The answering machine beeped.

“Benno.” I bit back “sweetheart.” I tried to remember what it was like to be ten. Double digits. Standing in front of the mirror staring at myself. It was a limbo age. I'd stepped off the shores of girl, yet the rocky coast of teenager was still a thousand miles away. It was easy to feel lost at ten, even in the best of circumstances.

“I'm calling to see how you are. I hope things are going well in school. Grandma tells me you're getting invited to all sorts of parties and the kids have nicknamed you California. That's a hoot! Do you like that? Well, things are boring here without you. Practically every day Anjuli asks me when you're coming back. She's gotten really tall and she babysits for Rhonda after school most days. And Penny, you wouldn't believe how big she is. So I have some good news. I have an interview tomorrow that I'm really excited about. It's at a credit union called Baytelco and it's for a teller position. Can you imagine? Me, a teller? I think I have a good chance. I'm a fast typist, which probably means I'll be fast on an adding machine. Wish me luck, I'll need it! Okay, well, I guess that's it. I'll call again tomorrow. I'm thinking of you.”

I didn't say “I love you”: I knew I had to earn back that right. I'd been so cavalier in my
love yous.
Tossing them to him like fastballs, never thinking for a minute he wouldn't be there to catch them.

In the end I realized I'd invested twenty-five dollars in a new suit for nothing—I may have looked the part but I didn't sound it: I'd blown the interview.

Once I got home, I called Ms. Hennessey at the employment agency. She'd asked me to check in after the interview.

“How'd it go?” she asked in an upbeat voice.

“I'm not sure,” I hedged.

“Well, how did you leave things? What did Mr. Ludwig say?”

The branch manager, Mr. Ludwig, was in his mid-thirties. A pleasant guy, but I'd found his crew cut a bit distracting. Whoever cut it hadn't done a great job; they'd left a quarter-inch ridge of hair running down the middle of his scalp. I couldn't stop looking at it and I couldn't stop wondering why a bank manager who obviously made a good income had such an incompetent barber.

“You mean his exact words?”

“Yes.”

“He said it had been interesting to meet me.”

“Oh,” said Ms. Hennessey. “Oh dear.”

That afternoon I put in applications at five bars and three restaurants for waitressing positions. Then I called Mike at Seven Hills.

“I'm desperate. Will you give me a reference?”

“That depends. Are ya going to be able to make it in on time for your shifts? 'Cause this is a small town and I have a reputation and I love ya, Lux, and I feel sorry for ya, but there's no way I'm giving you a reference unless you swear to Our Father that you will be on fucking time from this day forward. Do ya swear?”

“I've changed, Mike. I really have. I swear.”

“Okay, darlin'.” He hung up before I could say thank you.

“Hi, Benno. It's me. I thought you might want an update. I had the interview today and I think it went pretty well. But nothing's set in stone. So I'll just say I'm cautiously optimistic. I hope you had a great day at school. I put a care package in the mail today. Some of your favorite treats and a drawing from Penny. So, listen, I also wanted to tell you I'm sorry. I know you've heard it before, but I'm going to tell you again. I didn't take care of you the way I should have. I'll never forgive myself for that. I don't blame you if you never forgive me either, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. It's Wednesday.
Diff'rent Strokes
is on tonight. I wonder if you'll be watching. I think of you every minute of the day.”

I only allowed myself to fall apart at night when I was in bed with the lights off. It was then that despair pinned me to the mattress.

Benno was gone. Martha was dead. Greengage was seventy-three years away.

I was living in a world that didn't approve of me. My father was right: this was the life I had chosen and this was the life I had to inhabit. The problem was that I knew there was another life out there that suited me so much better. A world where I was known, accepted, and loved.

I hadn't wanted to admit this to myself because of the futility of the situation. What good would it do? I had a son who belonged in this world. A
Star Wars
–watching, Burger King–eating, Levi's-wearing, 1980s kid.

I had to find a way to belong here, too.

The next morning the phone rang.

“Hello, is this Ms. Lysander?”

“Speaking.” I didn't recognize the voice. Maybe it was one of the restaurant managers.

“This is Mr. Ludwig, from the Baytelco Credit Union.”

Mr. Ludwig? Why was he calling me at home? To tell me personally I hadn't gotten the job?

“I have a question for you,” he said. “If you wouldn't mind.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“In the interview. You kept staring at my head. May I ask why?”

Oh God.

“Are you going to ask me if I'd like you to tell me the truth?” he asked.

“Uh—yes.”

“Then, yes, I'd like you to tell me the truth.”

I tried to think of a lie, but I was too anxious to come up with a good one.

“Okay. Your barber did a shitty job on your hair. There's a ridge, maybe a quarter inch long, running down the middle of your head. It makes you look sort of like a Charonosaurus. From the Late Cretaceous period. It's one of the lesser dinosaurs. You probably haven't heard of it.”

He made a strange sound. Something between a bark and a cough. “Are you a paleontologist in your spare time, Ms. Lysander?”

“No, my son is.”

I heard the sound of his pen scribbling on paper. “All right then, thank you very much.”

“That's it?” I asked.

“That's it. Goodbye, Ms. Lysander.”

“So what happened with Baytelco?” asked Rhonda.

“I screwed up the interview.”

She made a sad face.

“I should have taken the job selling underwear at Macy's. What was I thinking?” I was too embarrassed to tell Rhonda I'd applied for waitressing jobs all over town.

“You were thinking you wanted to be more than a salesgirl. You wanted a real career. A career with a future. There's nothing wrong with that.”

“What's wrong with that is that I'm not qualified. I never went to college, Rhonda. The only thing I'm qualified to do is type, sell bras, or waitress. That's it.”

Rhonda gave me a stern look. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Call the employment agency back and get them to send you on another interview. There are other credit unions. Other banks. Get on it.”

My father answered on the second ring. “Lysander residence.”

Since when had he become so formal? He wasn't expecting it to be me. I'd called at 8:00
A.M.
his time, 5:00 mine. I wasn't sleeping well these days.

“This is Lux,” I said.

“Oh. Your mother is out jogging.”

My mother had taken up jogging? “I wasn't calling to talk to Mom.”

He paused. “Benno's here but he doesn't want to talk to you.”

“How do you know? You didn't ask him.”

“Benno, your mother is on the phone!” A few seconds later he said, “No go.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice from wobbling.

Just as I was about to hang up the phone, he said, “He listens, you know. To your messages. He plays them over and over again. Keep calling.”

The next morning I got up early, went for a jog myself, stopped at the Golden Gate Bakery, and even though it wasn't Saturday, delivered mooncakes to Doro and Rose, all before ten. When I got home, Ms. Hennessey from the employment agency called to tell me Mr. Ludwig had offered me the job. Apparently two things had impressed Mr. Ludwig quite a bit. My honesty. And my attention to detail.

Well, that was one way to spin my shortcomings.

I started a week from Monday and the salary was $195 a week. “Would that be acceptable?” asked Ms. Hennessey.

I spent the rest of that day in a sort of delirium. I had a job, a good, stable job. One that required me to dress like a grown-up and wear L'eggs pantyhose. Benno wasn't speaking to me, but he was listening to my messages. The world had been closed to me. Now it had opened the door, just an inch.

A
t precisely 5:45
P.M.
, Mr. Ludwig asked, “Is anybody short?” He made a concerted effort not to look at me.

I raised my hand. “Sorry.”

He sighed; I was the only teller whose drawer was ever short. Mr. Ludwig had been patient with me at first, but I was months into the job now.

“How much?”

“Twenty dollars,” I confessed. This was not an inconsequential amount. Tellers kept only five hundred dollars cash in their drawer.

“Can you stay late?” he asked.

Reconciling my drawer would require me to call every member who had made a withdrawal that day and ask them politely if they wouldn't mind checking their wallets to see if I'd accidentally given them too much money. Some people didn't have answering machines and I'd have to wait until they got home from work to reach them.

That was the bad part. The good part was that I knew nearly every member and some of them were like family to me. They'd come in every week and they'd tell me about their kids, their vacations, and their holiday plans. If my drawer was short, inevitably it was right before payday, when people were stressed out and trying to stretch their paychecks. Their roof was leaking and needed to be repaired. Their child had gotten sick and they had an unexpected doctor's bill. I'd see their tense faces and some unconscious part of me would slip them extra cash, a ten-dollar bill mixed up in the ones, a twenty in the tens.

“Absolutely,” I said.

He walked back into his office and I could tell by the way he pulled his shoulders erect that he was annoyed.

My fellow tellers were packing up, putting on their lipstick, and flashing me sympathetic looks. We'd become close. All of us young women, and all, except for me, college graduates. But not for long. This winter I'd start attending night school at City College.

I'd called five members (reached three, left a message at one, no answering machine at the other) when Mr. Ludwig stopped by my desk.

“Any luck?”

“Not yet.”

He held his briefcase stiffly by his side. “May I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you enjoy being a teller?”

I enjoyed talking to people and hearing their stories. But the math? The counting? The endless filling out of forms? The constant
tap, tap, tap
of the adding machine? No.

“Of course, why do you ask?”

He cleared his throat. “It's been four months since you started. Is something distracting you?”

Oh God, was he going to fire me? “No, I promise you, nothing. When I come here, I'm fully focused. There's no place I'd rather be.”

I'd worked so hard at being a model employee. I was the first to show up in the morning and usually the last to leave. I took on extra work. Covered people's shifts when they were sick. I couldn't lose this job.

“Look, you have to stop being so sloppy. This isn't Monopoly money you're handing out. We're a team here. Your drawer constantly being short affects all of us.”

I picked up the phone. “I swear it won't happen again.”

At 8:05
P.M.
I found the missing money. I'd given it to Mrs. Ortiz, a telephone operator. Her landlord had just raised her rent and she couldn't afford to stay in her apartment; she'd confided to me that afternoon that she didn't know what she was going to do. Mrs. Ortiz promised to return the money tomorrow. I told her it was the bank's mistake, not hers, therefore she was entitled to keep it.

The next day I withdrew twenty dollars out of my own account and gave it to Mr. Ludwig.

I hadn't made the drive out to the Valley of the Moon for six months now. Instead, on the night of the full moon I called Benno. He was the elusive fog, he was the other world I was trying to get back to. Our primary method of communication was my parents' answering machine. It had become a confessional, a place where I poured out my heart. Where I apologized, begged for forgiveness, recited poetry, and told stupid jokes. I played songs I thought he'd like. Blondie's “The Tide Is High.” Bruce Springsteen's “Hungry Heart.” I talked about San Francisco: the Niners' slump, the Giants' winning streak. Once I called and just said grace.
For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.
I hoped my mother would play it before dinner and it would seem like I was there in some way.

I spoke to my mother regularly. She filled me in on all the details of Benno's life. He had a friend named Sal who was somewhat of a tomboy. He'd tried out for the basketball team but didn't make it, so my father installed a hoop over the garage so he could practice. It had snowed ten inches, school was canceled, and my mother took Benno and Billy sledding at Fort Adams State Park and afterwards out for hot chocolate and glazed doughnuts. I was happy to hear he was thriving, but heartbroken he was thriving without me.

In February, instead of a valentine, I sent him a copy of
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
A week later he called.

“I got the book.”

I'd spoken to him only a few times since last summer. He was eleven now and his voice was deeper.

“Oh, good,” I said, acting as if we'd just talked yesterday.

“Why did you send it?”

“Because it's one of my favorite books.” I was going to tell Benno about Greengage, but I had to do it in precisely the right way. Ease him in gently. Otherwise he'd freak out.

“So what did you think?”

“I liked it okay, but Edmund was totally annoying. And who would want to eat Turkish Delight? I mean, it sounds delicious but it's actually disgusting. Squares of pink jelly.”

“Tell me some of your favorite parts,” I prompted him.

He paused, thinking. “When it was snowing in the wardrobe. And Lucy saw the light in the middle of the forest and she followed it.”

If he gave me the chance, I would show him the light that pierced through the fog and we would follow it together.

“I thought it was cool how they spent years in Narnia, but when they went home only minutes had passed.”

“That would be nice, wouldn't it, if it worked that way?” In my case it had been just the opposite. I took a deep breath. “It's good to hear your voice. I'm happy you called and I'm happy you liked the book. Will you call again?” I asked.

“Maybe,” he said.

I missed Greengage so much. I thought of it every day, just as I thought of Benno every day, thus I tried to keep both my lives alive. Every night before I went to bed, I recited a litany of their names.
Joseph, Fancy, Magnusson, Friar, Elisabetta,
and on and on. I begged for their forgiveness, too. Nine full moons now that I hadn't shown up. The fog could have been there every month, or for two of those months, or three. Or perhaps it hadn't even been there at all. That was the best-case scenario. I couldn't bear them thinking I'd abandoned them, too.

“They can't just do that. They can't just take the money out of my paycheck without my permission!”

Mr. Templeton stood in front of me, struggling to remain composed. A lineman at Bay Tel, he'd been working for the company for nearly twenty years. He'd taken out a loan to pay for his eldest son's college tuition, and he'd been late on his last two loan payments.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Templeton,” I whispered, “but they can.”

Mr. Pease, the collector, had begun garnishing his wages. I'd known this was coming. I'd gone to Mr. Pease and begged him to give Mr. Templeton another few months, but Mr. Pease refused. He was a smarmy man who delighted in others' misfortune. Sometimes I thought he approved loans for sport, when he knew the applicant would default.

“Perhaps if you went and spoke to Mr. Pease,” I said. “He might be willing to work out a new payment plan.”

Mr. Pease would likely do nothing of the sort, but I couldn't bear to leave Mr. Templeton with no hope. I slipped him an extra ten when I counted out his cash. I wouldn't tell Ludwig I was short—I'd simply add a ten of my own to the drawer at lunch.

The time I'd been at Baytelco had done me a lot of good. On Friday nights my colleagues and I had a standing date at Dino's for fried cod and half-price beers. Despite the limitations of my job, and my obsession to get Benno home, I got up in the mornings feeling like I had a purpose. I was part of the working world.

A week later Ludwig called me into his office.

“Shut the door, please.”

Oh shit.

“Sit down.”

I remained standing. “Please—”

“Sit down, Lux. I have something to discuss with you.”

I sat and bowed my head, waiting for the blow.

“Clearly you're not all that happy in your current job.”

I'd gotten a Meets Expectations on my six-month performance review along with a list of things to improve.

“That's not true, Mr. Ludwig. There are things I love about it.”

“Like what?”

“The people.”

“I'm sorry but that's not going to cut it. We have to face facts. You're not a good teller. It just doesn't come naturally to you.”

“But I'll make it a good fit. I'll do anything. I'll try harder, I swear.”

“There's no need to try harder.” His mouth was set in a hard line.

He'd already made up his mind and there was nothing I could do to change it.

I nodded. “How long do I have? Can I stay until the end of the week?”

Would he give me a reference? How would I explain another gap on my résumé to a future employer?

He gave me a confused look. “I'm not letting you go, Lux. You're one of the most hardworking employees I have. I'm promoting you to loan officer. Your customer service numbers are through the roof: members love you. There's a fifty-dollar-per-week salary hike, and the downside, obviously, is that you'll have to work with Pease—”

“Tell me you're not fucking with me, Ludwig.” I couldn't believe he'd just put me through this.

His cheeks turned red. “I am not fucking with you.”

“Oh my God!” I leapt up from the desk and threw my arms around him.

Being a loan officer was a natural fit for me. I loved hearing people's stories. When applying for a loan, they were always vulnerable, so I made sure to put them at ease. I had a photo of Benno on my desk, a great conversation starter.
Oh, you have children, too! Tell me about them. How old? What are their names? Where do they go to school? Yes, the cost of clothes has skyrocketed. Forget Macy's, Penney's has the best sales.

Once we'd made a connection, then they'd tell me why they needed the loan. College tuition. A new car. A vacation. To pay for their kid's braces. Their mother's nursing home. A leaky roof. I easily spent an hour with each potential customer, something Mr. Pease was constantly giving me crap about. “Half an hour tops is all it should take,” he said. Sometimes I'd see him timing me with a stopwatch. He could tell whether an applicant was a good risk as soon as they approached his desk.

“Just look at their shoes,” he told me. “Are they scuffed? Do they need a shine? Do they need resoling? Are they out of fashion? Have they been purchased at Goodwill? The shoes will tell you everything you need to know.”

I'd looked at plenty of shoes in my lifetime, and I agreed with Mr. Pease: they revealed quite a bit.
What
they revealed was highly subjective, however. Scuffed to him meant
desperate.
Scuffed to me meant
hard worker.
Out of fashion to him meant
given up, doesn't care about how they look.
Out of fashion to me meant
frugal, knows where they spend every cent.

When I had to reject somebody for a loan, I made sure I did it in a way that preserved their dignity. I never sent them away without hope. I gave them a list of things they'd have to do in order to get that loan, and many of them reapplied successfully in the future.