To See the Moon Again (38 page)

Julia handed Carmen the photo. Her thoughts were still whirling. She said the only thing she could think of to say. “Well, thank you.”

Carmen blotted the corner of each eye with the sleeve of her T-shirt. “No problem,” she said, with the smallest of smiles. “And Luna's going to write me. And send me pictures.”

Julia stood up and started clearing the table, and Carmen rose to help. Phrases from the book kept playing through Julia's mind:
the ultimate act of love, seasoned courage, the uncertain night ahead
. She could have picked the essay apart for its reliance on generalizations, its scattered organization, its affectations, the obvious effort of the Reverend Smith to sound earnest, literary, deeply moving, and whatever else he was trying to be. And the crowning touch, the laughable metaphor at the end about the pillow.

Nevertheless, behind the self-conscious rhetoric, there was something there. In the girl's own interpretation, she was the parent, but in Julia's she was the child. Reverend Bill Smith had a point. Letting Carmen go wouldn't be easy, but it was the good and right thing to do.

•   •   •

T
HEY
sat on the back porch later with their coffee and Coca-Cola cake, Carmen on the glider, Julia in the wicker rocker. They ate and drank quietly, as if at the close of a ceremony. They certainly weren't eating because they were still hungry. It tasted good, though, and they took their time. Daylight was fading, and all was quiet except for the occasional swat of an insect against the screen and a faint shushing sound, a mingling of breeze and brook. The music had stopped inside.

“This was Matthew's favorite dessert,” Julia said. Maybe Carmen's earlier openness was responsible for the remark, or maybe Julia would have said it anyway, at the end of their last supper together. Maybe it was the twilight setting that encouraged it—the trees stirring, the water lapping high on the creek banks from late spring rains, memories of the past year like warm, sweet air all around them, and the coming years spread out like the sky behind the trees, streaked with coral, a reminder that sunrise always follows sunset.

Whatever the case, Carmen was instantly interested. “Yeah? What else did he like to eat?” and “Did he ever do any cooking himself?” and “Did you sit together out here on the porch in the evenings?” Other questions followed, along with answers. And then a long pause, before Julia said, “I used to think I never should have married him, but now I only wish I had been a good wife to him. He was a good man, worthy of a woman's love and respect.”

“He never knew about the . . . little boy who died,” Carmen said. Not a question but a fact, offered reluctantly yet sympathetically, as if to remind Julia that her regrets as a wife had their source in an accident, not in a cold heart or whatever she was implying.

“No, but still.” What was the point of saying more? The fact stood that Matthew had deserved better, and—the hardest part—that there was no way to make it up to him. More silence, and then, “I asked him for the circular driveway, but never told him why. I hated . . . backing out of driveways.” She paused. “It was expensive, but he did it. Never asked why, just did it.”

“Life goes on,” Carmen said. It could have sounded flippant if spoken a different way, but it was meant as comfort. A simple, reliable truth, a mercy really, in the complicated matrix of an unpredictable universe.

“Yes,” Julia said. “Yes, it does.” Curiously, she had a sudden recollection of a videotape Matthew had watched over and over—a basketball game his favorite team had lost by a single point. One day after critiquing it again, he sighed and said, “Oh, well, I guess the score's not going to change, is it?” A funny thing to remember right now, yet relevant. You could replay and analyze the past endlessly, but you could never change it. The only hope was for tomorrow. A cliché, of course, but clichés were always grounded in truth.

Julia finished her coffee, set the cup down beside the dessert plate. Hers was bright yellow, Carmen's orange. “These dishes belonged to my mother. They're called Fiesta ware—not exactly a word that would describe our home growing up. No fiestas there. They were her everyday set. I haven't used them for years.”

She knew she was opening the way for more questions, and Carmen delivered. “What was your mother like?” and “Did she like music?” And “What did she look like?” And “Did she tell you stories?” Answers for each, and then this question: “Do you have a special memory of her?”

Yes, she did. As a child, Julia was easily frightened, prone to terror, especially during nighttime storms. She would lie in bed trembling, with visions of being swept away by floodwaters, struck by lightning, sucked up into the sky. Sometimes it wasn't a real storm but only a dream of one that woke her, made her cry out. And she remembered how her mother would always come to her room and slip into bed with her. They wouldn't talk, but her mother would take her hand and lie with her until she fell asleep again.

Julia shared the memory, and others, and at last found herself saying, “I didn't honor my mother as I should have. I blamed her for everything. I thought she should leave my father and take us with her, at least stand up to him and do a little yelling and screaming herself. But that wasn't her way. The last time I saw her alive, we had a terrible argument. She looked so old and beaten down. At the end she said something I'd never heard her say before. She told me she wished she had done better by us.
Done better by us
—it was an apology, I suppose, but it made me mad that she wouldn't come out and say she had been
wrong
, which was what I wanted to hear.” She shook her head, then added, “Growing up, I was always thinking of myself, never what it must have been like for her.”

“You were just a kid,” Carmen said.

“A selfish kid,” Julia said. “And afraid of my own shadow.”

“Kids are born selfish. And when they're afraid, there's usually a reason.”

“It's strange, though,” Julia said. “Pamela was younger, yet she weathered it all fine. She never was scared like me. Never cried when our father scolded her, just let it roll off. She called him Daddy. Even sat in his lap sometimes.”

“People handle things different ways.”

“My mother paid my tuition all the way through college,” Julia said, “even though I never went home. She had some money of her own, from her parents. She always sent me little notes with the tuition checks. I never wrote or called, but then finally the grudge visit, to make a point:
See, I made something of myself in spite of the wretched years I spent here in this house.
” She paused. “If only I hadn't . . .”

“It was an accident,” Carmen said.

“Accident or not, he still died.”

“You don't know what his life would've been like if he'd lived,” Carmen said. “It might have been a sad life.”

“Or it might have been happy,” Julia said.

“All our transgressions are carried away,” Carmen said. “He stretches out his hand to the needy. He rides the storm and divides the waters. We are troubled on every side but not in despair, cast down but not forsaken. He commands light to shine out of darkness.”

Julia had a feeling she was cobbling bits of verses together, maybe even making up some of her own for want of anything better to say. But somehow it was uplifting. And it reminded Julia of something in her possession, the small ray of light in her darkness.

“Wait here. I have something to show you, too.”

•   •   •

S
HE
went to her bedroom and came back with a sheet of paper. She handed it to Carmen and turned on the fan light. “After Butch tracked down Luna for you, I had an idea one day. I called him and asked if he could find out something about the Hammontrees. They were the family that lived next door to us in Nadine, Alabama. The ones with the little boy.”

Carmen studied the paper. “And he found them.”

Julia had remembered their first names, which had helped, not to mention the fact that Hammontree wasn't a common last name. She also knew Anthony Hammontree had been a firefighter, remembered that Marta's birthday was the same day as the accident—the newspaper had made a point of that—and of course knew their old address.

Butch had located them and compiled a brief report, which he e-mailed to her. Julia had printed it out and kept the paper folded inside a book on her nightstand.

Not many words, but enough.
Anthony David Hammontree, Marta Ellen Fisher Hammontree. Currently reside in Patchett, Ohio. Four children, ages 26, 21, 18, 13. Occupations: Anthony—fire chief of Patchett Fire Department, Marta—licensed practical nurse at Patchett Regional Family Clinic.

Julia had read it over numbers of times. She was most interested in the children, of course. Not that any number of other children could erase the grief of the one they lost, their first, but it helped her to know there were more. Though past sorrows could never be canceled out, the nature of time was such that it could at least furnish subsequent joys. She knew this to be true.

Carmen looked up and nodded. “Life goes on,” she said again.

•   •   •

J
ULIA
turned the light off. They had finished their cake by now but remained on the porch, watching as night crept in. The first stars glimmered as the moon rose—flashbulbs around a luminous celebrity. An owl in a nearby tree called and was answered by another farther away.

“What are you going to do this summer, Aunt Julia? Will you be okay?”

“Oh, I have some things in mind,” Julia said. “I'll be fine.” She had in fact given the matter a good deal of thought over the past week.

“The invitation to come to Wyoming for Frontier Days is still open,” Carmen said. “That's in July. I'll be settled somewhere by then.”

Such a rosy outlook. All week Julia had tried to block out the image of Carmen wandering around Wyoming with a hobo stick over her shoulder. “Maybe I'll wait till next summer for Wyoming,” she said. “I have to start teaching again in three months, you know. The dust is probably an inch thick in my office.”

She would review all her class notes, then ask Marcy Kingsley to show her how to do PowerPoint slides. And just that morning she had seen an advertisement in the newspaper for a summer fitness and recreation program at the YMCA, with a special price for “seniors,” a term defined as fifty-five and older. Well, that was all right. She might not appreciate the label, but she didn't mind the discounts.

She also had a story to finish writing. She hadn't told Carmen about it yet, but it was coming along and might turn into something more than just a story. And there were always books to read, besides a little traveling to do. Not a second try at New England—that would be for another summer, too—but a few short drives: a day trip to Thomas Wolfe's home in Asheville, a play or two in Abbeville or Flat Rock, maybe another trip to Andalusia, a couple of visits to Roskam. Thankfully, Carmen had asked only for a promise about what she couldn't tell Robert and Vanessa. No mention of staying away from their neighborhood. After all, Luna was her friend now. They had discovered they had much in common. A love of classical music, for one. Both of them had lost their husbands, for another. They both liked to read and had grown up in the South. And, of course, they both loved Carmen and Lizzy.

Carmen had asked her for another promise—to visit her church at least once a month and let her know how things were going. Julia knew the girl was hoping for more, of course, and praying, too. But she could promise her this small thing, and she did.

“I'm praying about college,” Carmen said now. She laughed. “Yes, Aunt Julia, we do have colleges in Wyoming.” Another laugh. She had narrowed her choice of majors to five, she said. She would keep Julia posted. “Say, did I ever tell you there are more men than women in Wyoming?” she added. “Who knows, maybe someday I'll find a man as good as Daddy.” She paused. “Well, I would probably have to train him a little bit first.”

•   •   •

T
HERE
was one more trip Julia would take before school started. One to Nadine, Alabama. She would drive down the street where she grew up. She might park the car and look at the house, and the one next door. She would go to the cemetery and pay her respects to her mother. Carmen's grandmother and Lizzy's great-grandmother. She would find her father's grave, too. No speeches, though. Just a brief, silent vigil to honor the ones who had brought her into this world, imperfect though it was, imperfect though they were.

And from time to time she would stand outside and turn her eyes to the night sky, so faithful and accommodating, always ready to close off an old day and give way to a new one, and she would remind herself that it was the same sky that sheltered everyone, the same moon that shone down on the whole world.

READERS GUIDE FOR

To See the Moon Again

BY
J
AMIE
L
ANGSTON
T
URNER