Perigee Moon

By Lynn Schneider

Dismayed at events occurring in his family and with the world in general, Luke desires a different kind of existence. Issues he has been unwilling to confront become important enough that he realizes he must make life-altering decisions, reconsider a variety of things he thought he’d understood all along, and revise the view of his own nature and place in the world.

Controlled by Kate, who has been his constant companion since childhood, he has been coerced into choices he never expected to make, and a lifestyle he never expected to live. Until the night of the Perigee Moon when everything has gone wrong and Luke makes choices of his own.

Abby, an old friend from high school comes back into his life and Luke finds the friend, the lover, the soul mate he has craved only to be subjected to Kate’s unwillingness to let go. Luke must convince Kate that what they had is over and convince Abby that what they have is right.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lynn Schneider
• Release date: Feb 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301837564

Lynn Schneider

Lynn Schneider is the author of three women's fiction novels. She is a baby boomer, who writes stories about her generation. She spent thirty years in IT and is now retired to pursue her career in writing. Born in western New York, she attempts to recapture the feelings, memorabilia and turbulence of the sixties and beyond. Whatever Happened to Lily? was published in February, 2010, Second Stories in January 2011, and Perigee Moon in May, 2012. Lynn blogs at www.lynnschneiderbooks.com.

Book preview

When the kids on Henley Street were seven and eight and nine, there was no one to blow the whistle. There wasn’t a leader among them, not one to make a decision. During the summer there could be as many as eight boys who milled around and collected together on the sidewalks. They wanted to do something interesting and fun but waited for someone else to take charge. Like in gym class, when Thursday was Bat-a-Ball Day, and Mr. Nash blew the whistle that made their ears hurt and picked two of his favorites to be team captains. Pick your teams, captains, he’d say. They knew what was coming but back on the street they waited for someone, anyone, to provide direction which never came.

One was Luke Koslov, known for being a nice kid. The mothers of the other boys patted him on the head. He’d never hurt a fly, they said. Such a cute boy and so nice. Luke’s best friend was Mark Mosley and he was the same, a hanger-arounder, unable to decide if it was Tuesday or Wednesday but the other mothers didn’t say too much about Mark. It might have been because he looked like that creepy phony kid on Leave It To Beaver.

Luke and Mark hung together every day and sometimes the Wright twins, Bert and Bart, were around too. Bert and Bart looked exactly the same and it didn’t help that their mother dressed them alike, in matching white Roy Rogers cowboy hats and string neckties. Luke and Mark could never tell which was which and when the Wright twins were called home, their mother would yell, Bert and Bart! It sounded like BertnBart and that’s what Luke and Mark called both of them. They were so alike, what did it matter anyway?

BertnBart always matched, the blonde cowlicks, the bright blue eyes, the too-red lips, the matching shirts and pants and shoes, right down to the color of their socks. Like bookends, a matched set. They even had an identical ribbon of snot from each left nostril to the top of each lip. They wanted to be included, but their alliance was to each other and there was no separating them.

BertnBart! Luke called to one of the twins.

I’m Bart, the twin said.

I can’t tell which is Bert and which is Bart.

You can tell I’m Bart because I have this. And he showed Luke his official team ring, the Los Angeles Dodgers plastic team ring molded with the team's insignia.

Where'd you get that? Luke asked.

Kellogg's Shredded Wheat, Bart said.

Free?

Yep, free inside. Bart admired the blue plastic blob on his finger.

Doesn't matter, you're still BertnBart.

Luke lived in a brick house next to the corner, Mark lived across the street and BertnBart lived two doors down from Mark. These were the main players in the Henley Street neighborhood. They met up with a few others who lived on the next street over sometimes, but only in summer when everyone stayed out until dark, or when they went down to Gibblin’s Little Park and tried to pump the kiddie swings high enough they’d circle around to the other side, looping the chains around the crossbar. It never worked, and would have scared the supper out of them if it had.

What do you want to do? Luke would ask Mark, and Mark would say, I dunno. And they’d look at BertnBart who’d shrug at the same time.

They collected pennies and went to the Little Store which was across from the Little Park and instead of buying candy they’d end up with rolls of caps, red with black dots of powder charge that made a noise like a shot when you put them in a cap gun. Luke, Mark and BertnBart didn’t bother with guns. They pounded the caps with rocks on the sidewalk and they’d pop and smoke. Sometimes one would flame up, and those were called hot ones.

In the summer of 1957, the old people who lived in the big corner house moved out to the old folks’ home. No one had seen them for weeks, even though the old lady used to be really nice and gave them cookies. She’d come out with a plate of four oatmeals and four gingersnaps and say, take two! And BertnBart always grabbed the gingersnaps and Luke and Mark were stuck with the oatmeals, but they were all pretty good anyway. That was Mrs. Kendrick and no one ever did see Mr. Kendrick because he’d been in bed for a decade. So when Mrs. Kendrick got sick too, they had to go to the old folks’ home and then there was a For Sale sign in the yard.

It was a big old place with narrow, tall windows, lots of rooms, even a third story and there were other buildings on the property, a shed, a garage, and another structure that Mark insisted was haunted. The Henley Street kids waited to see who would move into that house and hoped there’d be a kid or two. It was always exciting when there was a new kid in school, even more so when there was a new kid right there on Henley Street.

The day the moving van arrived, Luke and Mark were camped out on Luke’s front porch where they could watch what was happening at the big house while pretending to concentrate on a game of jacks. Then they played seven-up on the wall of the garage for a while. When BertnBart came around, they pounded some caps.

I see kids, BertnBart said.

Yeah, at least three, Mark said. He kept his head down, eyes up, so he could watch and the new kids wouldn’t see him spying. He had spotted at least three kids climbing up the ramp to the back of the moving van and jumping off onto the grass.

They’re girls! BertnBart hissed.

Having girls is worse than having no kids at all, Mark said.

*****

That same day after dinner, three kids approached, two girls and a boy. Luke, Mark and BertnBart sat on the steps of Luke’s front porch.

Hi, said one of the girls. We just moved in.

Luke stared. No kidding. They’d only been watching since noon.

None of the boys said anything so Luke said, Hi.

I’m Kate, and this is Shelley, and this is Nathan. She pointed as she introduced them.

I’m Luke and this is Mark, and they’re BertnBart.

BertnBart?

Yeah, twins.

Okay, Kate said.

She had long hair pulled back in a pony tail and the biggest front teeth he’d ever seen. There was a space between them. Luke stared.

The dentist says they’ll grow together, she said.

Yeah, they probably will, Luke said.

Your eyes are kind of scary, she said. Well, not scary exactly. Just different.

Yeah, Luke said. Everyone says that.

They’re really green.

Your eyes are scary too. Well, not scary exactly. Kate had the kind of eyes he found it hard not to look at.

Theirs are the same as mine. She indicated Shelley and Nathan.

Yeah, but yours are bigger. They’re nice though.

Thanks, Kate said. Want to play? Ever played pies?

No, they’d never played pies. Someone gets to be It, thinks of a pie, calls out the initials, and the others call out pie names. The correct guesser chases the It person. If the It person is tagged, the correct guesser becomes It.

BCP, Kate said.

Banana Cream Pie! Luke yelled. Kate took off and Luke ran after her.

Finally. Someone to blow the whistle.

*****

Kate showed up most days after that with her sister, who was older but really quiet, and her brother who was younger and cried a lot.

Tsk, stop it, Nathan, Kate would say. And he did. If Kate told him to do something, he did it.

Things changed a lot and for the better after Kate Willoughby and her sister and brother moved in. She thought of things to do that the others couldn’t have. She organized their play schedule and they now played at the Willoughby house most days. The outbuildings were a good addition because they could be used for houses and hideouts and hospitals.

They played in afternoons and after supper. They went to the little park, caught bugs, bought penny candy and shared it with each other. On hot days, they ran in the hose and ate popsicles.

Don’t you have to ask your Mom if you can turn on the hose? Luke asked.

Nah, she doesn’t care, Kate said.

I wouldn’t do that. He would never turn on the hose without asking.

Kate arranged elaborate schemes of cops and robbers complete with helpless girls taken hostage by bad guys. She was always the damsel taken by the robber, who was always Luke. Mark and Shelley were paired up, likewise. BertnBart and Nathan were always the dumb cops.

In the fall they played after school and on weekends, jumping in piles of leaves. Kate taught them to play house of leaves, where they were raked into lines which formed rooms with openings for doors.

Here is the living room and here is the dining room, Kate said. And there was a kitchen and bedrooms for the family who lived in the house of leaves

I’ll be the mother and Luke is the father, she said. And here is the bed. She raked up a pile of leaves inside the bedroom.

BertnBart and Nathan were babies who needed the proper amount of scolding and discipline. The older kids, Mark and Shelley always fought and Kate and Luke had to intervene and referee.

They pretended it was night and everyone had to sleep in the house of leaves.

Luke, we have to go to bed now, it’s late, she said, and pulled him down with her under the leaf bed and took his hand.

We have to hold hands while we’re in bed, she said.

Mark got tired of being the kid. It’s my turn to be the dad.

I don’t want you to be the dad, Kate said.

If I don’t get to be the dad, I’m not playing.

Go home then. So Mark played the kid but wasn’t happy about it.

I don’t like Kate, Mark told Luke.

*****

Mark Mosley moved away three years later. His father had a construction business and had become successful and along with that rich, so moved his family into a big new house in Seneca Heights, considered a good place to be from.

BertnBart stopped coming around too, having decided they’d rather sit inside and watch TV. They had ended up outside most days because their mother had shooed them out to get some fresh air but now that they were older she let them stay inside.

Kate still came around to Luke’s house and sometimes they’d sit on his front porch and talk or she’d say he should come over to her house and he’d play with her along with Shelley and Nathan. The day before school, which would be their first day of Junior High, they were in Kate’s living room.

Luke, Kate said. I want you to be my boyfriend.

Your boyfriend?

Yes. We’ll be boyfriend and girlfriend now. Okay?

I guess so. He wasn’t sure what it meant to be a boyfriend to Kate. He only knew he wouldn’t want to disappoint her or make her mad, so he went along with it and didn’t ask about what being a boyfriend might entail.

Kate’s front teeth had grown together like the dentist said they would. When the teeth next to the front ones came in they all got pushed to their proper place and though they were very large, it looked good to him. She had hair that was a dark golden color, pulled back into a pony tail, and she was very tan, but kind of skinny. He decided he liked it that she was skinny. She could run as fast as he could.

He’d gotten used to her big eyes. She stared at him without blinking and he stared back, hoping she would be the first to look away, but she never did. Not once.

Slam Book

Kate’s father was Mickey Willoughby, a typical mid-twentieth century male patriarch who spent the majority of time at his chosen vocation leaving the rearing of his children in the hands of his wife whom he’d called Mother since his first son was born.

Mickey owned a grocery store which he’d opened up just as the depression hit and for nearly a decade it had survived through barter and trade. As proprietor of Willoughby’s Food Market he had extended credit to all, no exceptions, no interest. Mickey was honest about what things should cost and honest about what was owed him. He was generous, gave away food, wasted nothing so that every perishable item was consumed.

He became a favorite, a well-respected businessman and when things finally improved, people remembered how he’d been during the tough times. They were already loyal customers and now they could afford to pay. Mickey’s store expanded and he opened a second but since he never trusted anyone but himself to run either of them, he was absent from his family much of the time. They rarely saw him, not in the evenings, not on the weekends, and sometimes not holidays either because his life was the stores, which grew and expanded into Supermarkets.

Thomassa, his wife, was burdened with a weak heart, which he hadn’t known back when they were courting when she was nineteen and he was twenty-four. She was dark-haired and olive-skinned and came into his store with two of her friends one day in June of 1933 wearing an expression of constant surprise since her eyes were the size of quarters and an unusual shade of brown because of streaks of gold that shot from her pupils to the outside of her irises. Cat’s eyes. Her lashes were so long they could be seen at a distance and he always thought of them as eye awnings. Smitten at first look, he married her a scant six months later. After three years of marriage and two children along with a maid and a nanny, she settled into a life of relative ease.

Mother discovered the advantages of being pregnant, that during the eight or so months that it was known a child would arrive (for the sake of the unborn child) and for three months after (for a proper recovery to occur), it was beneficial to assume a mostly prone position. With each of her pregnancies she became increasingly listless. Childbirth weakened her already diminished heart, she said, and ate more, exercised never, grew fleshy and poofy-cheeked, and issued orders from her sedentary posture.

Her children were divided into two groups. First a son and a daughter, Mickey Jr. and Patricia, then a gap of ten years and Shelley, Kathleen and Nathan came along. It was never clear to Mother why the long stretch of infertility happened as her husband was not about to relinquish his marital rights, but she was pleased with the way it had all turned out. It worked well, a convenience having that ten year break between batches of children because the older would watch over the younger.

She relinquished the care of the three younger to Patricia who would be her surrogate and by the time Mother was in her mid-thirties, her older children were doing many of the household chores as well as raising their younger siblings.

Mother’s children were all good looking, with the possible exception of Mickey Jr. who looked like his father. While it could not be said that Mickey Sr. was handsome, neither was he unattractive. With thinning hair, more red than brown, freckly, and a tendency towards portliness, still heads turned whenever he dressed up though it might have been more of a superiority that Mickey Sr. seemed to exude, as if everyone should show the proper deference. Mother hung on to his arm, tilted her head and smiled politely at passersby whenever they stepped out. She was pleased with her husband and pleased with her lot in life. She couldn’t have done it better.

The youngest three were images of Mother and had all inherited her unusual eyes. Beautiful children, everyone said, and while that was all well and good and Mother appreciated the compliments, she had little interaction with the younger three and was democratic in her neglect.

*****

Kate was the fourth child and came into the world screaming for attention and demanding to be the favorite, the one most cherished.

Mama like Kate best! The others would agree. Yes, Kate, Mama like Kate best. But Kate knew better. Her emotions were nearly always in an uproar; anger, bitterness, hopefulness. It was as if Kate had been born self-centered but no one agreed with her, especially not Mother.

Don’t be so needy, Kate, Mother said.

*****

Kate settled for attention at school, which was easier to achieve than attention at home. She was bound for success, a member of the In Crowd, one of those picked first, the leaders of games, invited to everyone’s birthday party, never at a loss for a friend on the playground, because she was beautiful and did not lack self-esteem.

In Junior High all the elementary schools came together, a mingling of pre-adolescents, and the powerful cliques were born, established from the sub-cliques of each school of lower academia. The popular with the popular, the studious with the studious, the rebellious with the rebellious. Mixed up into ten separate classes and divided by abilities to further segment the formation of groups, Kate landed in an advanced class and so into prestigious associations with others like herself. Girls from privileged homes, who were above average in both intelligence and looks, melded into one group. The cool kids

*****

Luke and Kate rode the bus to and from school.

Since you’re my boyfriend now, you have to sit with me, she said. Luke thought how he might rather sit at the back with the other boys and discuss episodes of Gunsmoke but Kate insisted he stay with her. Luke figured riding the bus together must be ample evidence of the boyfriend-girlfriend status and if Kate wanted it, he would.

Besides sharing a bus seat, Kate now wanted him to give her things. Things that would demonstrate his commitment as her boyfriend. Like football medals.

There’s a problem with that, Luke said. I don’t play football.

"Well, you could play football. She flipped her hair back, which didn’t need flipping. Then you could give me the medal and I’d wear it around my neck. And besides, all the cool boys play football."

Luke didn’t want to play football necessarily and guessed he was not cool but may become cool by virtue of having his body pounded by boys much larger than he. He didn’t mention it to Kate, that he wasn’t completely sold on the idea and that he might prefer to be a spectator. She continued to prod and knew when the tryouts would be and convinced him to go. She’d be a cheerleader, she said. He’d play football and she’d cheer and they would go to the games together and he’d score points and she’d be so glad he was her boyfriend and he’d give her his medal and she’d be very happy. Didn’t he want her to be happy? Well, yes, he said, he guessed so but wondered why it would take such a great effort on his part to accomplish it.

Luke’s parents never told him what to do so he thought maybe someone ought to. It might as well be Kate. She was, after all, his girlfriend. He announced to his parents that he was going to try out and they said well that sounded good, and he went to practice and to the games and barely got off the bench. Seems he wasn’t aggressive and hung back to avoid conflict. There were others like himself who were playing because someone told them they ought to and not because they wanted to, and the coach yelled at them, called them sissies because they weren’t getting into the action enough.

But he got his medal which Kate appropriated. The only reason he’d played at all was to get that medal for her. And that hadn’t been the end of it. She’d given him an ID bracelet for his birthday and he hadn’t thought much of it except he had secretly thought it a strange gift, and a week later she told him she wanted to wear it as further proof of their going together. She now wore the ID bracelet she’d given him and a football medal.

He thought Kate might decide she liked someone else better than him, someone who was more popular or played better football, but it didn’t happen. It appeared she wanted Luke and also wanted him to do things he didn’t necessarily care to do.

Soon after the ID bracelet, Kate gave him her cameo ring. He should wear it on his little finger she said. That meant he was taken. She wanted his football jacket, his jersey, his sweatshirt. He gave it all to her. He was taken.

*****

Occasionally in the privacy of a secluded spot at Kate’s house, she kissed him. He decided he liked it, the way her lips felt against his. He didn’t instigate the kissing but was a more than willing participant. Kate said because they were going together they had to do the kissing.

Do you want to? she asked.

What, kiss you?

Yes.

I guess so. He shrugged.

She sighed. Then you should start it.

So he did.

*****

In Junior High, Mark Mosley was back and even though he didn’t live close by any longer, still Luke and Mark were friends at school and ate lunch together. The girls sat with other girls, and boys with boys, about which Luke was very glad, to have at least some time with the guys.

Kate ate lunch at the popular girls table, a table for ten. If one girl were missing they might invite an outsider to sit at the popular table, considered very advantageous for some lucky girl of a lower social standing, even though the new girl had to sit on the end and when the missing girl came back the new girl was banished back from whence she’d come.

Looks like Laurie Moffet gets to sit at the stuck-up girls table, Mark said as they slid their trays along a table for six and took seats on the end.

Luke laughed. He knew he should defend Kate and her friends except he felt the same.

Kate is at the center there, see, that’s how it works. The ones in the middle are the coolest so there’s two coolest on each side of the table, and next to them on either side are the next coolest, and at the ends are the least coolest, Mark said.

Maybe, Luke said.

"Kate’s nasty. I know she’s your girlfriend, but your girlfriend pushes you around. You should get rid of her now while you still can. Be a man, stand up to her. You going to let a girl do that?"

She doesn’t push me around.

Yes, she does. She’s been doing it ever since she moved in across the street. You shouldn’t let any girl do that. Because then they know they can and you’ll never get a really nice girl to like you. They’ll all be mean and snotty like Kate.

Kate’s not mean and snotty.

Not to you, maybe. But to everyone else she is. She talks about everyone, has a name for everyone and she even talks about her friends sometimes. She hates me and I’m glad of it, Mark said. She’s just nasty.

It was true. Kate hated Mark and Mark hated Kate. But Luke liked both of them.

Mark was underweight. His height always seemed to get ahead of the amount of pounds that should have covered his bones. He had eyes that popped and were the color of a March sky and dark blonde hair that was wavy, too wavy, and it sat close to his scalp and always looked greasy with the stuff he put on it to straighten it out. He wore black glasses and his feet seemed too big and he had a tendency to trip over them and stumble into desks in class. The other kids laughed when he did it and he laughed along with them. He wasn’t athletic at all and ridiculed Luke’s pathetic attempts to be a convincing football player.

At least I know my limitations, Mark said. You don’t.

Despite Mark’s obvious late-blooming tendencies, he was funny and the kids liked him, except Kate who had no use for him. Luke never understood why Kate didn’t like Mark and never asked. And he wondered why Mark, who didn’t dislike anyone, hated Kate with a passion.

Why don’t you like Kate?

She’s bad news, man. She’s just bad news.

*****

In the spring, the phenomenon of the slam book was introduced. Each girl maintained her own, a spiral notebook which had the name of one classmate at the top of each page. Boys were included on the pages of slam books but were not permitted to participate in the slamming. The slam books were passed around among the girls who would write what they thought of each person on their page. Good looking! Great eyes! So smart! What a cutie! Or the generic, Wow! Occasionally, a negative remark might be entered. Stuck up! Messy desk! Laughs too loud! Or the generic, Ugh!

One rather mousy classmate with an attitude had the gall to say something not quite nice about Kate, something about Kate being two-faced. Mark heard the actual wording was both of her faces are pretty, and told Luke about it at lunch.

I wouldn’t want to be that girl when Kate gets her revenge, Mark said.

Kate’s not like that, Luke said.

Are you kidding? She’s a weasel.

Luke watched what happened next. How the girl, Linda, had her locker trashed, how no one in Kate’s group would speak to her. Not in lunch, in class, or in the halls. Everyone talked about it, how Kate and her group made life miserable for Linda. People said negative things in slam books all the time about some people. But not Kate Willoughby. No one had ever dared say anything about Kate before.

Man, you need to call her on it, Mark said. She’s got no rules when it comes to getting even.

Luke had nothing to say in Kate’s defense. He couldn’t think of any way he could possibly defend her.

She’s just nasty, Mark said. "And she wants you. I don’t envy you, Luke. She wants you and you go along with everything she wants, ‘cause you don’t think about what you want

Muriel and Karl

Luke heard the story of his parents, Muriel and Karl, as told to him and his sister, Barbara, by his mother on so many occasions that he could have said, wait, you left out the part about… Of how they met, how they came to be married. At first it had embarrassed him, then astounded him that his mother should keep repeating it until finally it became old news and he wondered why he had to hear it so often. He decided his mother must be a romantic and the one good thing that had happened to her was the passionate love affair that she and his father embarked upon immediately following the end of World War II.

That’s the word she used, passionate, to describe the man who sat in the green chair six feet away from The Life of Riley, in baggy pants purchased with little thought as to size or style at The Workingman’s Store in a shade somewhere between brown and gray and green, and a tee shirt that had been white in some previous decade but was now permanently wrinkled and shapeless and yellowed. Sometimes he covered it up with an old gray sweater with holes in the elbows made by constant rubbing against the scratchy fabric of the chair, which had been sitting in the same spot for as long as anyone could remember.

Luke supposed that during that time, after the war when everyone was giddy with relief, inhibitions might have been lowered and maybe more alcohol consumed as a way of celebrating that at last life may eventually return to normal and the fears and uncertainties of several trying years could be, if not forgotten, then at least put at the backs of the minds of everyone. That was what he supposed, not knowing for sure, only that it could have been that way and he rather hoped it had been because to think of his parents as passionate was troubling on many levels, not the least of which was picturing his father that way. It would have been an unexplained phenomenon, not believable by himself or anyone. But Luke assumed his father had had his romantic moments back then and his mother insisted that things weren’t always the way they were presently and you never know about a man, what boils underneath in that internal masculine lockbox.

Muriel and Karl enjoyed six months of bliss until two things happened. One, Muriel found herself with child. Two, Karl relapsed into a state of rigorous monotony. Luke suspected his father might have had a boring life up until the time he went into the Army and fought in France and then when it was all over, had the affair with Muriel. There had probably been the required six months of passion, then the relapse into his predetermined boredom. Luke couldn’t imagine that his father had been one kind of person for eighteen years and then turned into the opposite. It was more likely that Karl had always been boring, had been not boring for a while, and then returned to his rightful state. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

If Muriel hadn’t become pregnant, if she’d been able to be with Karl in the unencumbered state for even a month or two longer, Luke suspected they might never have married. Being the romantic she was and assuming Karl reverted to who he really was, it would never have worked. But facts were facts and romance aside, there was a baby on the way, which as it turned out, was Luke’s sister who was born in 1946 a scant ten months after the casual meeting of Muriel and Karl at a place which called itself a canteen for the servicemen who were repatriated from various and scattered locations around the world. Karl had been discharged and Muriel worked as a typist for a local newspaper devoted to news of the war, recipes for casseroles made out of potatoes and powdered milk, and various social happenings of which there were almost none.

*****

Not a bad thing could be said about Karl, who was a minimalist, in the sense that he did the minimum required to survive in any kind of meaningful way. He worked at a factory job at the tile plant but didn’t get ahead, didn’t get promoted and contributed almost nothing to the maintenance of the house except he did mow the lawn until Luke was old enough that the torch of yard work could be passed on. Karl liked to sit and he liked to eat and he liked to watch TV and he liked to sleep. He didn’t like to work and he didn’t like to discuss current events and he didn’t like to go out unless he went by himself to Benny’s Tavern, which he did once weekly but no more than that.

His life was a stream of endless days that started the same and ended the same. His breakfast was always one bowl of cereal, one piece of toast, one glass of orange juice, and one cup of coffee. His packed lunch was always one bologna sandwich and a second (which on any given day may have been different, depending on what had been for dinner the night before, but was most likely also bologna), one piece of fruit, one handful of Schuyler’s potato chips, and one thermos of coffee which was consumed on his fifteen minute morning break and finished up at lunch.

He wanted simple dinners, meat, potatoes, vegetable. Dessert. Then he retired to his green chair and watched TV until it was time to go to sleep so he could wake up and do the same thing all over again.

In 1964 Karl was involved in a minor accident at work and ended up twisted over a workbench with a wrenched back. It probably wouldn't have put down a more ambitious man but for Karl it was a ticket to freedom. He went on disability and instead of sitting in the green chair for only two complete days in any week, he could now enjoy that luxury for a full seven. He watched The Price is Right and Wagon Train and Father Knows Best. He complained about reruns but watched anyway. He pretended to nap through The Secret Storm because Luke suspected he wouldn’t want to admit to anyone that he watched it. Soap operas. His father snorted.

Unlike people who went on disability and then were seen secretly chopping wood or running chain saws, Karl, once that check from the government started showing up in the mailbox on the fifth of every month, wasn’t about to risk it for anything as reckless as performing any activity that resembled real work.

Karl’s only outing was the trip to Benny’s. He walked, stepping carefully, swinging that right hip which had stiffened up quite nicely, making slow progress shuffling down the sidewalk with an ivory handled cane. The patrons of Benny’s slouched over the bar nursing ten cent drafts, never got rowdy and never told jokes. When his father stopped going to Benny’s and Luke asked him why, his father had said everyone there was boring. Why would that be a problem? Luke wondered but didn’t ask. And besides it was too much effort, his father said, him being disabled and all.

*****

His mother had been lovely, he could see that from the old photos she kept, and she still was. He remembered thinking during a school event, maybe second grade or so, when all the mothers were invited to the classroom, that his mother was the prettiest. She was slender and fair with dark blonde hair and big green eyes. She’d worn a dress made of some coarse but slinky material which clung to her hips and swirled around her knees. She wore those shoes that women did then, open-toed and high heeled. He’d always liked to see those shoes on her.

Muriel knew her days of romance were over when she had to marry Karl but never lost her appetite for it and became enamored of the love stories that she borrowed from the library. She secretly stole a look at her teenage daughter’s love comics. But never could she find the perfect love story. Something about each romance wasn’t quite right so she decided to write her own. She bought a notebook with lines on the pages and smudgy dark green things on the cover, and wrote longhand in pencil as she sat at the kitchen table, erasing when necessary, crying over the sad parts, while she waited for the potatoes to boil so she could turn down the flame and not make a mess on the stove.

She sent her stories to women’s magazines for consideration with absolutely no expectations. The Ladies Home Journal, Life and Look. They were always returned to her. No thanks. She continued writing them anyway, it being the writing part she loved. Seeing them in print would have been but an added benefit. Eventually she got a reply that said no thanks, but said it in a different way. We don't accept stories that aren't typewritten, the letter said.

She bought a second hand Royal Aristocrat portable typewriter and typed the story and sent it again. But another reply came back in the mail which said that her story, while lovely, was probably not suitable for them but she might try other, less serious women's magazines. There was a handwritten PS that asked if she had ever considered writing a full length novel? Her stories seemed to lend themselves to books.

With that encouragement, Muriel wrote her first romance novel and when it was finished she typed it up and sent it to a publishing company, who rejected it. She sent it to another publishing company, who also rejected it. She sent it to a third, and began to write a second novel. Muriel now had a separate notebook to keep track of where she'd sent the novel, when it was returned and rejected. When the second was done, she started over and sent it to all the same places she had the first. Eventually she sold the second novel for $800 to a relatively new publishing house which specialized in what she wrote, stories of enduring love. The fact that she’d sold one was important, not how much they’d paid for it.

She was also a knitter of large items, afghans and small blankets, things that took no fussing. As she finished one novel, she began a project for yet another lap cover or baby carriage spread or chair throw, and plotted. She sometimes could be spotted with tears streaming down her cheeks, unchecked. Not the sobbing, heaving kind of crying, just a steady flow, as she knitted

Reviews for Perigee Moon

[rasana4atreya · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The author weaves a wonderful tale around the main characters, Luke and Kate. I was drawn so deeply into their tale that I cheered Luke on when things went well, and gritted my teeth in frustration when they didn't. Kate, well, is another story. Read to find out.