To See the Moon Again (22 page)

“Well, yeah, but it's still sad,” Carmen said. After a while she sighed and added, “Sometimes it's easier to forgive others than yourself, isn't it?” Julia gave no answer, and the girl didn't press for one.

•   •   •

W
ITHIN
a few moments the music on the radio, the same piece evidently, seemed to be reaching a climax—a sustained roar underneath more clanging noises, like a freight train plowing through a crowded car lot. “Heavenly day,” Julia said, and turned it off. The rain had diminished to a slow drizzle. She turned the windshield wipers to the lowest setting. The distance to Boston wasn't far, but long enough for more talking if she didn't act. “How about starting
Ethan Frome
?” she said. “It's short. We can read a couple of chapters a day and be done by the time we get to Edith Wharton's home.”

Never had Carmen refused to do anything Julia had asked of her. Nor did she now, though it was obvious her heart wasn't in it. She reached into the backseat and pulled the book out, then adjusted the back of her seat and started reading.

Only after she had read the first paragraph did Julia remember how foreboding the whole introduction was. But, oddly, Carmen's spirits seemed to lift as she continued to read, though perhaps it was just an act. She began slipping in a few comments of her own, so smoothly it was hard to tell she was departing from the text. Only a few times did she trifle with the serious tone, however, as when she read the part about Ethan Frome's disfigured face: “But since he didn't want to be confused with the Phantom of the Opera,” she inserted, “he decided not to wear a mask.” Not for a second did she pause for a reaction but kept right on reading.

She finished chapter one, then put the book away as they were nearing Boston. “Well, that's pretty . . . lugubrious,” she said. “I mean, we already know he ends up crippled.” She readjusted her seat and turned to look out the window as Julia again reminded herself to give more careful thought to what they read aloud. Something light and humorous would have been a better choice on a dismal day like this. Well, too late now. They rode the rest of the way without talking. It was still drizzling lightly, and the sky showed no signs of clearing. Wet, gray fog muted the colors of the leaves.

•   •   •

B
Y
two o'clock, they were setting out on a walking tour, starting at the Boston Common. It was cold, but at least the rain had subsided to a sloppy mist. Too, they shouldn't have to contend with crowds of other tourists on a day like today.

Carmen walked with her hands jammed into the pockets of her hooded fleece, pulling out a folded sheet of directions to refer to from time to time, occasionally reading aloud a dull paragraph of explanation about one of the places, but mostly scanning the faces of the people they passed.

For almost two hours they kept to the route, hurrying through the landmarks of Boston: the Massachusetts State House, the brick row houses and gas lights along the cobblestone streets of Beacon Hill, the Old Granary Burying Ground, the statue of Benjamin Franklin, the site of the Boston Massacre, the Old Corner Bookstore, the Old State House. Lots of old things in Boston. Somewhere along the way Carmen pointed out the famous grasshopper weather vane, but Julia knew she would never remember which building it was on since she didn't feel like jotting notes in her journal on a day like this.

It was too bad. Here they were right in the middle of so much history, yet it felt more like a bothersome homework assignment they were rushing to finish. Maybe it was the weather or maybe the fact that Boston wasn't new to Carmen. She had lived in the general vicinity at some point, had been to the city several times. Maybe they should have opted for a guided tour so she could have heard things she didn't already know.

Or maybe they were just trying to do too much in one trip. Whatever the cause, it was a shame this beautiful old city wasn't getting the attention it deserved, that there would be no memory to carry away, only a blur.

•   •   •

A
FTER
the walking tour, they ate an early dinner and headed back to their room. As they were approaching the hotel entrance, someone exited and jogged past them, a tall young man in a tan jacket, holding a newspaper over his head against the rain, which had picked up again. Carmen spun around and stared after him.

“Do you know him?” Julia asked.

Carmen shrugged. “I guess not.”

They went inside to the elevators. A family was already waiting to go up—a frazzled-looking couple and three small children, one of them a baby wearing a white cap with ear flaps, tied under the chin. The man was holding the baby, and the woman had the other two, both boys, by the hand. They looked to be around two and four, and the younger one had something brown all around his mouth. The older one twisted around and looked up at Julia and Carmen, staring back and forth between them, finally settling on Carmen.

The father punched the button again and said, “These have got to be the slowest elevators in the world.” The baby, looking over his shoulder, scrunched up her face and let out a wail right in his ear. He shifted her to his other arm, closer to her mother, who smiled at her and said, “It's somebody's bedtime, isn't it?” The mother had a pale, narrow face and straight, limp hair. She looked worn out, as if it were her bedtime, too.

The baby kept crying. “I knew we should've brought her stroller with us,” the man said. It was then that he became aware of Julia and Carmen standing behind them. “But, hey,” he said, making an attempt at joviality, “she ain't heavy, she's my baby!” He bounced her up and down, but she continued to cry. “Where's her juice?” he said a little less jovially, and the woman let go of the boys' hands and rummaged in the bag she was carrying over her shoulder. The bottle was practically empty, but the baby saw it and made frantic little whimpering sounds as she reached for it. She put it into her mouth and sucked greedily, but all she got was dry, whistling sounds.

“Here, baby doll, you've got to tip it up,” the mother said. The man repositioned the baby in his arms so that she was leaning back, and she began sucking again, with more success.

Just then one of the elevators dinged and the door slowly opened. A large woman in a red capelike raincoat, holding a miniature dog in her arms, came hurrying into the lobby from outdoors and called, “Wait! Hold the door! We're going up, too!”

They all moved into the elevator, and when it was determined that they were all headed to the sixth floor, Julia began to imagine the worst—being in a room sandwiched between a screaming baby and a barking dog. Well, she had requested room changes before and wouldn't hesitate to do so again.

It was a small elevator with a mildewy smell. When the door finally closed and they began their labored ascent, there was a low-pitched grinding noise from somewhere directly above them. The two boys, enthralled by the idea of an animal in their midst, shifted their attention from Carmen to the woman with the dog. They stood on their tiptoes trying to see the dog, a curly-haired white puffball, panting and trembling in the woman's arms as she talked baby talk to it and stroked its head, her diamond rings flashing.

A strong scent of cologne began to mix with the smell of mildew as Julia watched the digital numbers of the floors light up ever so slowly. The man had been right—this was an exceedingly poky elevator. And wobbly—Julia wished there were a tactful way to suggest getting the weight distributed more evenly.

They had made it only to the third floor when the baby emptied the bottle and began fussing again, flailing her arms about. The mother handed the man the diaper bag and took the baby. She tried to calm her, but the volume of her crying escalated. It was remarkable how loud one baby could be in an elevator. The man sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “No, leave those alone!” he said to the younger boy, who had reached up and was tugging on a set of brightly colored plastic keys clipped to the diaper bag.

During all of this Carmen had said nothing, but suddenly she leaned over right in front of the baby's face and spoke to her in a Donald Duck voice. Not just quacking sounds, but actual, understandable words—“Hey, there, little girl, where did you get that pretty white cap?” Just one more example of something Julia didn't know she could do. The baby instantly froze midcry, her face still contorted, her mouth still wide open, but making no sound, only staring at Carmen instead. The little boys stared, too. The older one said, “Do that again.” So she did, this time addressing the boys: “What's up, guys? My name's Donald Duck. Have you seen Mickey Mouse anywhere around here? I'm looking for him.” The boys giggled.

•   •   •

A
ND
suddenly everything was more relaxed. The baby let out a string of shrill gibberish and clapped her hands together. The father leaned down and picked up the younger boy. “Oops, I guess we forgot to wipe your mouth, didn't we, buddy?” he said, laughing. The mother kissed the baby on the forehead and smiled at Carmen. “I guess I need to learn to talk like that. It sure did the trick for her.” She unclipped the set of plastic keys on the diaper bag and handed them to the baby, who stuck them in her mouth. The woman turned back to Carmen. “I love your hair. Mine is just hopeless in this kind of weather. I bet yours is naturally curly, isn't it?”

Carmen nodded and jerked a thumb toward the dog. In her duck voice she said, “Me and him, same hairdo.”

The woman in the red raincoat released a little arpeggio of laughter and said to her dog, “Does wittle Buffy wike the sound of the funny ducky-wucky?” Little Buffy continued to shiver, his bulging black eyes darting about nervously.

Mercifully the number 6 lit up just then, and they stopped with a clunk and a shudder. There was a brief delay before the bell chimed and the door began to slide open—just long enough for Julia to have a sudden horrible vision of the eight of them trapped inside the elevator overnight. Well, nine counting the dog.

“Here we are, folks, step lightly so the boat doesn't tip,” Carmen said in her Donald Duck voice. The little boys laughed and clamored for more. The woman with the dog got off first, fluttering a hand and calling back, “Say ta-ta to everybody, Buffy!” Her coat billowed behind her like a sail as she swept down the hallway, chirping “Ta-ta! Ta-ta!”—thankfully, in the opposite direction from Julia and Carmen's room.

Julia stepped out and waited for Carmen, who held the door open for the family. The baby was still diverted by the plastic keys, now plucking at them and shaking them. Her chin was wet with drool. The man put the younger boy down outside the elevator. “Where are you ladies from?” he asked Julia, and she told him. He chuckled and said, “Up here to see some
real
fall color, huh?”

Julia was already noticing that people up here in New England were more than a little condescending in their attitudes about other parts of the country. As if fall color were a foreign concept to anyone from a state like South Carolina. “We're from
Vermont
,” the man offered, in a tone that suggested it was a bedroom community of the Garden of Eden. Another benefit of the trip suddenly occurred to Julia, one she hadn't thought about until right this minute—that they would actually get a double dose of fall color this year, the early show up here and the later one at home.

Carmen was out of the elevator now, kneeling in front of both boys, who were telling her things to say in her duck voice. As they collapsed into another round of giggles, she looked up at their parents. “Sorry, you probably don't want them getting all wound up.”

The woman smiled and shook her head. “That's okay. It's been sort of a disappointing day for them. For all of us, really. Thanks for making us laugh.” The man started shepherding the boys down the hall, in the same direction Buffy and his owner had gone. The woman lingered a moment. “Life can sure get crazy sometimes,” she said, looking after her husband and sons. “Now we'll see how it goes with all five of us sleeping in the same room. That should be interesting.” She looked back at Carmen. “Thanks again. I'm glad we could ride up together.”

“Me, too,” Carmen said. Her eyes were on the baby. “What's her name?”

The woman untied the baby's cap and pulled it off to expose a headful of feathery down standing up as if electrically charged. “Allison,” she said. “We're calling her Allie. Say bye-bye to the nice ladies, Allie.” She lifted the baby's hand and waved it, then smiled again and started down the hall after her husband.

Though Julia was relieved it hadn't lasted any longer, she was glad for the elevator ride, too, since it seemed to have cheered Carmen up, at least for now. She hoped the girl's brooding spell was over. Tomorrow they would leave Boston and drive the short distance to Cambridge to see Longfellow's birthplace, then head to Derry, New Hampshire, to visit Robert Frost's home. Maybe tomorrow the sun would be shining and everything would be back to normal.

W
HATEVER
H
ARD
T
RUTH

As it turned out, there was a memory to take away from Boston after all. And when the parts finally came together, a veil was suddenly lifted on the past few months. If Carmen had been a book Julia was reading, she would have reproved herself for missing the subtleties of foreshadowing. But Carmen wasn't a book, of course. This was real life.

What happened was this. Julia unlocked the door to their hotel room, took off her jacket, and hung it over the back of a chair. Carmen stooped down by the door to remove her shoes. Julia walked over to turn on the television. She flipped through several channels until she found the evening news. She watched a moment, then turned to another channel and watched, until she decided she liked the looks and voice of the first newscaster better and went back to that one. Just as the anchorman said, “The Dow fell thirty points today,” Julia sensed sudden, swift movement behind her and turned to see Carmen lying facedown on one of the beds, not crying audibly but surely crying.

She was stupefied. She stared for a moment, then turned back to the television, her thoughts whirling. At home she had heard Carmen in the night and other times had seen her fight tears, but never had she seen her give herself over to them like this. Her first impulse was to doubt appearances. Maybe the girl was just tired from all the walking. Or it could be more than physical—a deep weariness, not only of cold rainy Boston but of the whole trip, being cooped up in a room and a car, being dragged from place to place, being expected to act interested and make conversation. Maybe she just wanted to go back to South Carolina, where she could take long walks by herself and retreat to her own bedroom at night and close the door.

But as she looked at Carmen again, now clutching a fistful of the floral comforter, something told Julia there was more to this. But what could it be?

A sound from the bed—a suppressed half squeak, half sob, and a long, convulsive heaving of shoulders. Julia considered her options. She hated to intrude on anyone's sorrow. Maybe it would be best to cover the awkwardness by pretending she hadn't noticed. After all, the television was turned up loud, so Carmen might think she hadn't heard anything. Julia could disappear into the bathroom right now and take a long shower, thus giving the girl time to get herself under control.

But that was no good. Though such an act could disguise itself as politeness, Julia knew it for what it really was—cowardice. Or, maybe more to the point, selfishness. For she knew what she was hoping deep down—that she would be spared having to offer something in return for an unburdening of the soul.

A sudden image came to her mind—a kitchen accident from many years ago. Her mother had sliced her hand open with a knife while cutting up a chicken. She had cried out and dropped the knife with a clatter, then grabbed the dishcloth and held her hand over the sink. From the living room, Julia and Pamela had heard her, had both rushed into the kitchen. Julia had seen the blood and shrunk back in horror while ten-year-old Pamela had taken over.

Julia looked again at Carmen lying on the bed. Please, no open wound, she thought. Let it be bandaged in private, let grief be swallowed silently. Yet other thoughts rose.
You can't turn away from this. You have to step into the middle of it. You have no choice.

She turned the television off and walked quickly to the bed. She sat on the edge and touched Carmen's hand. The girl moaned softly, raggedly, but turned her palm up. Julia gathered her hand into both of hers and held it tight. “Tell me,” she said, and even though it wasn't exactly true, she added, “I want to know.”

At length Carmen raised her head. “I don't think I can do this, Aunt Julia.”

“Yes, you can. Tell me.”

“The trip, I mean,” Carmen said. “I don't think I can do it. I thought I could and I've tried, I really have, but I just can't. I can't be here right now. I'm sorry, but today was just awful. New England is so dark and cold and . . .”

“The weather is supposed to be nicer tomorrow,” Julia said, though she knew that wasn't what she meant.

“. . . and scary and depressing.”

“I'm pretty sure the Salem witch trials are over.”

Carmen rolled over on her side. “It's a good thing,” she said with a faint smile. “They would've hanged me for sure.”

“Tell me,” Julia said again.

•   •   •

I
T
was a sad, sordid story. The clues had been there all along. The sounds in the night, of course. The intense interest in children. The careful observation of couples. The long walks and interludes of silence. The preoccupation with guilt and forgiveness. The early resistance over the trip to New England. The increased edginess as they neared Boston.

Even her confession at Julia's kitchen table in June, when she told about her years since leaving Wyoming—there had been clues there, too. She remembered one of the last things Carmen had said that night, stopping in the doorway:
There's more, if you want to ask more questions. I didn't tell you every detail.
And her own response:
You've told me enough.
Surely if she had pressed the girl for whatever the
more
was, the whole truth would have come out.

It was unfair, though, that the burden should have been on Julia to get to the truth. Why hadn't Carmen just come out and told her instead of waiting to be asked the right question? It could be considered a lie, her holding back. If not technically a lie, an argument could certainly be made concerning the sin of omission.

The wonder of it all, after Julia heard the truth, was that the girl still clung to prayer, still believed there was a God in heaven, still thought good men walked the earth. This could be interpreted, Julia supposed, as a faith past shaking—something to be desired. Or as a lack of basic common sense—something weak and pitiful that needed to be fixed.

•   •   •

C
ARMEN
didn't rush. She sat up on the bed, Indian style, and started at the beginning. Julia sat on the other bed and listened. For the most part she reserved her questions, not wanting to extend the telling longer than necessary. Though she might have wished for fewer details as time wore on, there was a certain comfort in the protracted nature of the narrative, for it delayed the conclusion, the moment when she would possess whatever hard truth was coming.

Some of it could have been amusing if Julia weren't in such a state of dread. The introductory sentence, for example: “I was seventeen when I caught a ride in an eighteen-wheeler in Prentiss, Massachusetts, in the middle of a New England heat wave, with a man whose arms were completely covered with tattoos of galaxies and planets.” She paused a moment as if to give Julia time to digest all of this, and then continued.

It was July, and she was walking toward a field where she had heard a carnival was setting up. Her hope was to get a job of some kind for a few days before traveling southward, down the eastern seaboard. Even then, three years ago, her ultimate goal was to make her way to Julia in South Carolina.

The left shoulder of the road was tall with weeds, so she was walking on the right side, which had been mowed. Why it should matter which side of the road was mowed and which wasn't, Julia couldn't imagine, but she kept quiet and let Carmen tell it the way she wanted to.

The story continued, detail upon detail, until she finally made her way back to the part about the tattooed truck driver, who offered her a ride to Hartford, Connecticut. The truck was a gleaming white semi, but it didn't have any writing on it except for a notation in tall black letters:
110 INCHES INTERIOR HEIGHT.

“Did I say how crazy hot it was that day?” Carmen said. “I knew a nice new truck like that would be air-conditioned.” She shook her head. “So that's how I wound up in Hartford—a place I never even wanted to go.”

She wandered around Hartford for two days, looking for a halfway friendly face—someone she might approach about a few chores to do, maybe a place to sleep. She had some money from her last job in Maine and some leftover snacks in her backpack. She spent the first two nights on the back porch of a crumbling house being converted into apartments, then left in the morning when the workmen started arriving. She found a park with rose gardens, a lake, a playground, and she went there with take-out food in the evenings and watched the families.

Her rule of thumb was to give a town three days, and if no work turned up, to hit the road again. On the afternoon of the third day, she passed a little mom-and-pop Mexican restaurant called Paco's Tacos, wedged between a laundromat and what used to be a drugstore but now served as a church: Faith, Hope, and Charity Tabernacle, according to the sign in the window. On the sidewalk in front of the restaurant was a very old Hispanic man with a broom, using it as much for support as for sweeping. She asked him if she could sweep for him, told him she didn't need money, she was a champion sweeper from way back and just wanted to help. He studied her face at length, then motioned her inside. He led her back to the kitchen, spread his arms in a hopeless gesture, and said, “You help
thees
?”

The kitchen was a mess. If DHEC had dropped by right then, the restaurant would have been closed for good. The old man spoke enough English to make her understand that somebody in his family had died, or was in the process of dying, and he was trying to keep the business open with the help of two others, who were coming in for the evening shift. “You clean thees,” he said, surveying the kitchen with his sad, watery eyes, “I pay a leetle.”

And that was how Carmen landed a job as kitchen help and waitress at Paco's Tacos. Paco himself eventually got well and came back to take over, but he kept her on and let her sleep in the catchall room they called the office. He paid her with a little cash and free meals—the kind of food she had never eaten before. “But it was fine,” she said. “I ate it all—enchiladas, quesadillas, chimichangas, you name it. It was all okay. You can get used to anything.”

•   •   •

S
HE
stayed in Hartford through the end of the year—the longest she had stayed anywhere since leaving Wyoming—and what happened in those five months changed her forever, left her with guilt for a lifetime. “It's there from the time I wake up till I go to bed, and all through the night, too,” she said. But she was dry-eyed as she spoke, staring down at her hands.

She looked up at Julia. “Have you ever read
The Scarlet Letter
?” Something told Julia this wasn't just one of her goofy, irrelevant questions. Carmen laughed. “Sorry, dumb question. You have a PhD in literature. Of course you've read
The Scarlet Letter
. Even I've read it. Once in tenth grade and once in a library in Chicago.” She looked away. “Twice is enough.”

She could have stopped there, and Julia would have known all she needed to know. On the one hand, she wanted to say, “Please, no more. I get the general drift. You can skip all the details.” But on the other, she knew Carmen needed to tell it all—and, though she couldn't say why, she knew she needed to hear it.

“My story's not exactly like Hester Prynne's, though,” Carmen said. “For one thing, I didn't stay at the scene of the crime. I left. And he . . . wasn't a preacher like Arthur Dimmesdale. His father was, though.” She was staring at her hands again, but now her fists were clenched. “I had a baby.” She looked up and said, “I hate the word
illegitimate
. A baby shouldn't ever be called that. Life is never illegitimate.”

Julia couldn't take this in. That day at her kitchen table, months ago, when she had reeled off questions and Carmen had answered them—hadn't she asked about this very thing? “You told me you had never been pregnant,” she said.

Carmen sighed. “I knew I was misleading you, and I've regretted that a lot.” She looked away. “You asked if I'd ever gotten pregnant after a man abused me. But, see, what happened in Hartford wasn't abuse. We both knew what we were doing, and we knew it was wrong. So I told you no. It was a . . . deception. I'm sorry.” Carmen hung her head.

After a long moment, Julia spoke. Though her mind was teeming with questions, there was one that had to be asked first: “Where's the baby?”

Carmen took a deep breath. “She . . . died right after she was born.”

The draperies at the window were still open. It was dusk and the sky was finally clearing over Boston. Behind shreds of gray clouds were streaks of fiery orange, purple, gold. Tomorrow held the promise of sunshine, of trees aflame with autumn glory. Julia felt a sudden resentment that misery could be set against a backdrop of such beauty.

She looked back at Carmen. To think that this child had had a child—it seemed impossible.