The Hunger Moon (9 page)

It was not as if Eleanor hadn’t been given time to rehearse his death. She had, and during the last months, when illness filled the house, hanging over her life with its sour smell and its released chaos of emotions, she had longed for the equilibrium of normalcy—which, given the scenario that lay ahead, meant she had longed for Robert’s impending death. She had never wanted him to leave her, but when he already had left her, and the wasting stranger who was blind, bedridden, and did not know her transformed her life into a state of siege, she wanted Robert’s body to die with the rest of him.

She shocked her children by taking a leave of absence and going on a cruise within a month of the funeral.

“Mother, don’t you think it would be better for you if you
stayed home where all your friends are?” Helen asked on the phone from Houston. “Or, if you need a change of scene, why not come here?” Eleanor could hear her five- and seven-year-old grandsons fighting in the background. This was about the time Helen had first begun to speak to her in a tone that suggested that she, Helen, was the aggrieved parent and Eleanor the misguided child. Her daughter’s tone was plaintive and demanding at the same time, as if somehow her mother were not being fair for making an independent decision that Helen could not see the logic of.

Eleanor spent a week poring over cruise-line brochures, and men booked three weeks on a mid-size ship departing from Florida. She took a few thick novels with her, but spent most of her time on a shaded deck chair just staring at the line where the sky and sea met. She was able to discern enormous complexity in that line after a few days of watching it—how sometimes it was invisible to her eye, yet certainly there; how at sunset it would sometimes reveal to her a quick flash of the most improbable green. She didn’t remember much afterward about her fellow passengers, although she surely must have talked to them every night at dinner. She did receive the attentions of a seventy-ish widower who pressed her to accompany him on shore excursions and to dance with him in the Cabaret Room. She refused these invitations, as well as the inappropriately expensive bracelet he tried to give her as a farewell gift before they docked, but did take from him his business card, which she stared at absently when she unpacked back in Belmont, putting it on her dresser, where it remained for a year.

After the cruise, Eleanor seemed outwardly like her old self, just as, years before, after the brisk spring cleaning one could see no traces of mourning for the miscarried baby. She was efficient this way, giving herself some activity to purge the affliction of sadness, and then putting the cause of the sadness behind her. But a marriage of more than four decades was not to be so easily put aside. At first, everything Eleanor did was tinged with Robert’s
presence. Reading the newspaper in the morning reminded her of the way he would read interesting bits to her without looking up, and how he could not start his day until he had digested the contents of the
Times
, the
Globe
, and the
Journal
. She began reading the paper at night over her supper, something neither of them had done. When the car needed an oil change, she let the maintenance light stay on for six weeks before she finally drove to a service station—Robert had always made this his job. His favorite devil’s food cookies remained on the cupboard shelves for months before she was able to throw them away, and she finally had Peter come down and take what clothes he wanted of his father’s before bundling the rest up for the Salvation Army just short of the first anniversary of his death.

She tried to remember what daydreams she occasionally had had about things she would do if she lived alone. They turned out to be less satisfying in practice than in fantasy. She took a drawing class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, and went to only half the sessions, having filled a sketchbook with ten pages of lumpy, unpromising life studies. For several months she ate the kind of spicy takeout she enjoyed, and which had given Robert indigestion, until she tired of the flavors and went back to broiling plain chicken and fish at home. She bought herself a cat, an animal Robert had been violently allergic to, and found that for the most part the creature and she ignored each other, though it was nice to have it sleeping warm at the foot of her bed at night.

She had resented very little in marriage, and found herself missing much. Things that had irritated her about her husband—how he never put a single thing back that he had used, for instance, as if he thought a surgical scrub nurse was standing by to receive and dispose of anything he was finished with—now seemed insignificant next to the loss of his jokes, his conversation, and his faintly soapy smell.

These things occupied Eleanor’s mind after June’s earnest inquiry, and yet there was nothing to say in reply to the girl. The
question, after all, was absurd. Grief was an intangible companion that moved in quietly after a death and came and went according to its own schedule. One day it seemed to leave for good, without letting you know its plans. Then came moments when you couldn’t clearly picture the face of your own husband, and you actually had to look at photographs to remind yourself of that other life you led. As she stared at the busy activity at her feeder in the mornings, Eleanor often felt a bewilderment. How had she gotten here? One day she was dipping Easter eggs with Isabel in a great sun-filled kitchen, her mother and nurse looking on. The next she was driving her three school-aged children to the pond, the car filled with black rubber inner tubes baking in the backseat. Now Eleanor had a silent white room to live in, as plain and empty as a box, and she drifted asleep in it, loose on some great tide she neither welcomed nor feared.

J
UNE WAS WORKING ON TURNING HER AURA
pink again, on the advice of Miriam Lightcap, psychic adviser. She thought her aura must have turned to its present dark purple—the color of a bruise, Miriam said—at the moment of her father’s phone call. The jagged red and yellow borders probably emerged during their lunch together.

He had been enthused about his newest real estate venture and laughing over Melanie’s extravagances at a spa in Florida. June stared at his necktie, trying to remember if it was one she had sent him. Ties were the only present she had given him since he had left them. At lunch he was wearing an expensive-looking jacquard weave of blue and green; she didn’t recognize it.

“So, why do you waste time on these dance classes, Junie?” He had never stopped calling her by her childhood name. “I mean, I’m sure they’re fun and all, but I don’t see why you have to pay good tuition money to take them. Why not use your electives for some business or computer classes, and take the dance classes at the Y?”

“I could teach those classes at the Y, Dad. You know I’ve been taking dance for fifteen years now.”

“Well, why don’t you? Earn some extra money, get your exercise
in, and use tuition credits for something useful.”

“I don’t dance for exercise.”

“Well, what, then? Oh, never mind, Junie. I can see you getting mad at me. Take whatever you want at school. I’m just trying to be a father here, you know, help you think practically about things. But if you want the dance classes, for God’s sake, take them. Just do me a favor and see that the degree is worth something by the time you finish, okay? Take some meat-and-potatoes courses, not just dessert. I’m happy to put you through school, but afterward you’ve got to be able to cut it yourself, you know, kiddo. Everybody does. Part of growing up.”

June toyed with her salad.

“Christ, you’re just like Melanie. Won’t order anything but salad and mineral water, and then you barely eat three bites.”

June forced herself to ask. “How is Melanie?”

Her father beamed at her. “Just great. You’d never know that woman was thirty-five. She could pass for your sister if you two were shopping together.” He sawed at his steak. “Actually, June, we’ve got some news. Melanie wanted to be here to help tell it, but this was the only week she could get in at the spa. And when I tell you what’s up, you’ll understand why the spa is so important to her right now.”

June waited.

“We’re gonna have a kid, June. What do you think about that? I sure as hell never imagined myself starting over at this age, and Melanie always said she never cared about children—I mean having them,” he corrected himself. “But here we are, going for it. I think that biological-clock thing started to get to her.” Her father popped a French fry into his mouth. “You just going to sit there and stare at me?”

June wasn’t just sitting there. She was extremely busy telling herself,
Don’t change your face, don’t cry, this doesn’t affect you in the least. This does not concern you
.

“That’s great, Dad.”

“Yeah, it is, kind of.” Her father cleared his throat. “June-bug,

I know I wasn’t there for you much in the last eight years. I’m sorry about that, but I can’t get those years back. This is a second chance for me to be a dad, so it means a lot that you feel happy for us. I appreciate that. More than you know.” He reached over and squeezed her motionless hand. “And,” he continued dramatically, “it’s going to be a boy. I never thought about it one way or the other when the doctor handed us you,” he said, winking at her. “I thought you were a pretty special package. But now that it’s all going to happen again and we hear that it’s a boy, I’m thinking, great! We’ll do the father-son thing: Cubs tickets, dude ranches, whatever the hell else. I’ll have to read up.”

“Dad, you hate baseball and you hate dust.”

“I do hate that shit, Junie. You know me pretty well. Do you think he’ll be born with a fondness for single-malt whiskey and eighteen holes of golf?”

June shrugged. “If he knows what’s good for him.”

Her father didn’t react to her tone. He signed the restaurant charge slip, snapping off his copy of the receipt. Then he got out his checkbook. “Here’s a little something for Christmas, Junie. Get yourself something nice.” He wrote the check in his illegible hand, and waved it to dry the ink. June accepted it without looking at the amount.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Don’t mention it. I had a good year, so it’s a little bigger than usual. But don’t expect that much all the time,” he said, lifting his index finger in a mock scold.

“When’s the baby due?”

“Wha?”

“My brother. When’s he due?”

“Jeez. He will sort of be your brother, won’t he? The due date’s June twelfth. That’s a nice coincidence, isn’t it? You want to be dropped, Junie?”

“No, I’ll walk.”

“Just like Melanie—an exercise nut.”

“Mom’s doing fine, by the way,” June said.

“That’s great, just great. Listen, I gotta get to that meeting. You’re sure you don’t want a ride somewhere?”

June waved him away. “Merry Christmas,” she called to his back.

“Oh, hell yes,” he said over his shoulder. “Merry Christmas.”

J
UNE WAS TEMPTED TO RIP THE CHECK IN HALF
, but it was for five hundred dollars. She decided that part of it would go for another consultation with Miriam Lightcap. She took pleasure in picturing her father’s reaction if he learned that his money was going to a psychic healer who was helping her to balance her energies. Her first visit to Miriam had been by chance; she had happened to see the sign in a Kenmore Square window and gone in on a lark. But now she was hooked on the calming mint tea she sipped in Miriam’s waiting room, the New Age music of chimes and bird calls that floated in the background, and the gentle authority with which Miriam’s fingertips rested on her temples to assess her spiritual health. Miriam said she had a lot of work to do with her energy channels.

Some of the rest of her father’s money would go for Christmas shopping, although she really had hardly anyone to buy for. There was her mother’s gift, of course, and her father’s annual tie. June had no boyfriend. She had no real best friend, either; the people she knew from dance class were nice, but everyone she met seemed to already have all the friends they needed. June was shy about issuing invitations; she didn’t want to appear friendless, though that’s exactly what she was. Halfway into her second year, she still felt lost at the university, with its sprawl of buildings that melted into the pavement of the city.

June debated, then decided she would buy a Christmas gift for Mrs. MacGregor. Even though she knew Mrs. M. had family and friends in town, she didn’t seem to see much of them. Whether she wanted to see June or not, she did twice a week, and June figured that was probably the most contact she had with anyone.

It was a hard present to choose. Clothing was too personal, and
anyway, Mrs. M. didn’t seem very interested in venturing beyond her uniform of stretch pants and sweaters. June knew she used to like clothes. She had dusted a silver-framed black-and-white photograph of a handsome young couple who looked as if they were straight out of the movies. The man was wearing wool trousers and a tweed jacket and his hair was lustrous and dark. His arm was flung loosely around the shoulders of a young woman in a closely fitted suit whose fair hair was twisted up and who was leaning her head back to smile. It was the unmistakable shape of the darkly lipsticked mouth that made June realize with a start that this was Mrs. MacGregor and her husband.