Deep Water Moon

By Nancy Louise Roberts

This beautifully written novel is loosely based on the author's life as the stepchild of a State Department official who grew up in exotic locations in Europe and Asia, as well as the United States. But the family had a dark secret -- incest -- that would affect the lovely, talented girl's ability to form meaningful relationships throughout her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543956795

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© 2019 Nancy Louise Roberts. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-54395-678-8 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-54395-679-5 (ebook)

Table of Contents

Joy

The Light At The Edges

Searching For Stones

The Curse

Eclipse

Falling For No Reason

Oh Dad, Poor Dad

Convergence

The Real Father

Fly Away Home

JOY

My grandmother had good reason to feel righteous. Chosen to fulfill the family tradition of woman-in-a-wheelchair (there was one in every generation), Ruth instead discovered the Christian Science Church founded by Mary Baker Eddy. She seized that ethereal remnant of ancient woman power and twisted it round with the strands of her more immediate inheritance: a little Calvin, a little Plymouth Rock, a little hatred of this bloody female body. Whatever it was that made her parents and aunts and uncles cry, Ruth is the weak one! simply disappeared, and Ruth, a woman with a strong face and unruly blonde curls pressed into a bun, stiffened her spine, twisted though it was by scoliosis, never had so much as a headache, and bore all seven of her children at home.

This is what Anne, who was my mother, told me, or what I think she told me. Sometimes my memories of her and my memories of myself blur together and I cannot be accountable for the truth, if there can be such a thing as truth when it comes to a life. Does it matter? Her life. My life. We shared the same womb in different ways, as did my father and my stepfather James in their ways, and my brothers in whatever way boys wallow in and kick at wombs.

Ruth’s firstborn, the twins William and Luke, died in infancy a week apart. Ruth wept a little, admonished herself to honor the supremacy of Spirit, and went on to bear five more children--at home and unassisted--with stern reminders to love the Lord and hate the flesh. She liked to tell the story of how one day she thought she had to go to the bathroom, and out came this baby, only it was blue and deathly still, so she wrapped it in a towel and put it under the sink. Having seen two infant sons fade into death, she was resigned. Then her husband came home and she, a litte bit upset, told him of this baby. He said, Show me, and so she unwrapped the towel, and lo, a pink baby shook its fists at them, arched its back and screamed. This was Michael, the surviving son. A year later came Alice, who grew up to become a Born Again Christian.

Anne, who would someday be my mother, was the third living child. Her birth was unremarkable. Anne was the Sweet One. Her face was shaped like a narrow heart, with a tiny pointed chin and delicate bones. She hated being sweet. If there were a religion that would heal her of sweetness, she would have converted. As it was, she could not, like Michael, decide to turn pink, arch her body and scream. Instead, she curled up in the swing on their huge veranda, wrapped herself in an afghan because she was always cold, and waited, memorizing the light in the leaves of the elm tree and the way the branches joined each other like bodies twisted in some violent community of love.

It is likely that my mother didn’t see the tree in just that way, but she could have remembered it like that later. It is also possible that she never thought about trees at all, but I think that even when she was very young she saw things beyond her years, inchoate, through her skin, through eyes that were, as she said to me once, on the bottom of her feet.

Quaking Anne, they called her. She often shivered. Ruth would press her lips tightly together and say, In God’s truth there is no discomfort. Coldness is Error. She slapped at Anne’s icy hands with a wooden spoon sometimes, but mostly she was otherwise occupied, a baby on her uneven hip, a dustcloth brandished in her free hand like a heraldic banner. After Anne came Susan, who emerged from babyhood not right. Her features were slack and thick, her eyes dull. Speech came to her slowly and she never smiled. Her name was Poor Susan, but not for long, because at three she died of a lung infection. Then, finally, came Esther, the only redhead. A child always in motion, she gave off sprays of color like a waterfall.

Michael, the one living son, was held up at the center of the family like a young Apollo. He is the light of my life, Ruth would say. He is good to his very soul. Anne watched him rake up the leaves, studied the play of muscles on his arms, the cling of trousers. He didn’t seem to notice her much, was too much a man before she was even a girl anyone would notice. But his eyes were like dark ripe olives, and his hands, when they absently tousled her hair, were like the first summer sun descending.

What no one knew but Anne was that Michael stole things. He stole her collection of pretty stones, her ribbons. She didn’t tell her parents, nor did she speak to him about it, for she loved him helplessly, and it puzzled her why a large boy would want her things. Then he stole the pennies she’d saved for over a year, and that was too much. She stormed into his room where he lay reading one of his father’s books. Her face was flushed and brilliant, anger for once snapping the sweetness out of her eyes. He sat up and his face was cold, as if she had no right. He would not agree to return the pennies he’d stolen. And so she told Ruth what he had done.

When their father returned from the New York office later that week--he was often away, almost a stranger to them--he took Michael into the basement and you could hear the shrieks. Anne crouched in the swing, her eyes squinted against the writhing leaves in the tree. That night, when everyone else was asleep, Michael crept into her bed. You hurt me bad, he whispered. And all I ever did was love you. When his hand slipped up under her nightgown, she knew she had no right to say anything in her own defense, not ever.

This is what I read between the lines of my mother’s forehead, within the silences that completed her sentences instead of words. Perhaps I am magnifying, distorting even, under the lens of these second-hand memories and my own conclusions. But I don’t think so. I think she never got to belong to herself again. Even so, she was joyous, I’m sure of it, excited, like a hummingbird trembling on the brink of scarlet flowers that held out their tongues to her like panting dogs. Anne held inside herself a secret place, hot and hidden. It is probable that no one noticed, not even Michael, who noticed nothing but his own need.

Anne drew pictures on a sketch pad she kept hidden under her bed. She sat beside the big elm tree and studied the way the branches arched out from the trunk, the way the leaves were fastened to the twigs, the texture of the bark. Secretly she studied faces, hands, the curve of armpits, the swirl of hair at the crown.

When Anne was thirteen, Michael started talking at the dinner table about Europe and the threat of war. There’s a man called Hitler, and he’s got to be stopped. He’d wave his fork for emphasis, which made Ruth press her lips together. I want to be among the first to fight him. I want to go.

His father shook his head and said, America isn’t going to be in any more wars. We learned our lesson. Michael shrugged, caught Anne’s eye and winked. She blushed, and later alone in her bed she wept, for she did not want him to go away, even though she had prayed he would leave forever. Michael enlisted in the Army. When he left, he stopped beside her at the swing on the veranda, tapped the top of her head, and said, Bye, kid, as if he saw her as just a normal sister.

Alice bobbed her hair, went to proms and sighed about her fingernails and clothes, wore a little cat smile when she talked about boys. Anne ignored her, kept her hair in braids, and when the boys from school came around, she sat silently or went to her room. After a while they stopped trying to talk to her.

Right out of high school, Alice married a Naval officer and moved to Maryland. When Anne finished high school, she got a job selling tickets for the Northern Railroad in Chicago and signed up for an evening art dass at Northwestern. Ruth was horrified, whether about the job or the class it was hard to tell. She stood at the sink, her wide uneven hip jutted out against her apron, and explained to Anne and to Esther, the youngest:

Your great-grandfather owned a plantation in North Carolina.

A slave owner, said Esther.

Actually, Esther didn’t say that, not that I know of, but it would have been like her. I’m sure, in truth (which is not the same as fact) that these people said more or less what I set down. Does it matter? It is the tone of things that endures, the textures and colors, the way the oilcloth felt on the kitchen table when it was cold, the way Ruth wielded a dish rag and stood crookedly at the sink, and the way Esther sat at the table, her eyes already cynical, her fingers twisting her wiry red curls.

Your great grandfather’s brother was a senator. Ruth would have gone on to this. Your grandfather on my side was a great attorney.

When he wasn’t drunk. Esther again.Your grandfather on your father’s side was a famous judge out west, and before that, the Revolution. You go back. You go back.

To convicts, no doubt.

She is my most wicked child, Ruth said, smiling and shrugging at Anne, who listened in silence.

What does this have to do with selling railroad tickets? Esther might have said then.

And Ruth might have replied, Everything.

Esther, the baby, was still in middle school and occupied with being precocious. Anne, who was going to be an artist, wore loose smocks smeared with charcoal and wrapped her braids around her head like a dark crown.

Her art teacher was David, a young man who seemed to be built out of wood, the muscles of his arms in planes, jutting hips, tight round buttocks. His dark hair hung over his eyes like a horse’s and his eyes were like Michael’s, large and wet and ripe. He was not a kind teacher. He would grab the charcoal out of her hand and slash across her drawing. You’re too tight with it. Too small. Another stroke across her painstaking work. Like this. Exaggerate. Not like life. Make it big.

His words and his strokes on her paper were like blows to her body. She felt the heat rise up to her eyes and kept her breaths shallow until she was home alone and could tear at her pillow and lament aloud her inadequacy at the one thing she had kept herself alive for. But she went back to the class because it was the only thing there was, and she began to understand what he was trying to get her to do. Sometimes David stood back and watched her at work and seemed to like what he saw. Sometimes he touched her shoulder, and his eyes demanded that she look at him. At night she thought of him and rubbed her breasts beneath her nightgown, round and round, like laying the softest stick of charcoal on her skin and smearing it thick and black.

She liked selling railroad tickets. Mr. Henry was a kind boss. He left her alone, trusting her to do it right. She liked the authority of the brass bars between her and the people. Her quick understanding of the timetables was a kind of triumph, the way she could plan a route faster than any of the others. She liked the sound of the trains, the scream of brakes, the sensuous hiss of steam, the whistle that sounded like all the cries of loneliness rolled up into one.

And she liked to think of the great network of trains as a gigantic living hand clamped onto the country, thick with throbbing veins, pressing into it alive and sweating and excited. And she, a heart, pumped people into it, directed them, urged them into the living flow with her smiles and her fine mastery of timetables.

Father was sick with something that wouldn’t go away. The name of what it was no one said. Ruth was furious. You’re just like him, she yelled once late at night, when Anne, shivering in the new chill of winter, could not sleep. You want me to take care of you, just like he did. You want me to make you better, when you know that only Christ . . Anne heard him murmur indistinctly, then her mother again: I won’t have another baby in this house. It is Error, Error, and you are weak, weak in your faith. She brought church practitioners to the house and sent them to his room. She stopped bringing trays to him, saying, Let him get up when he’s hungry enough. She would not bring him his books, and his books--thick volumes of poetry, philosophy, Victorian novels--were his life. Anne sneaked books into his room and brought him food when she thought Ruth wouldn’t notice. Once, when she’d laid down a cup of broth on the table by his bed, he stopped her with his hand. His eyes were a faded blue and filled with an old pain. Now, she thought, now, maybe he will speak and I will finally know him. This frightened her, for ever since the time with Michael she had hardened her heart against him. But all he said was, You’re a sweet girl. Then he slumped back on the pillow and turned his head to the window, which looked over the fan-shaped filligree of the elm tree. The sky was the leaden gray of an Illinois winter.

Sometimes at night her father cried out. Only Esther dared to say, For God’s sake, get him to a doctor. Anne bent double in her bed and covered her ears. She grew ambitious at her job and calculated how much money she would need to move out on her own. The art class was drawing from live nude models now: women with great round breasts and thick muscular legs, who looked at her with bold eyes and became as marvelous as trees. One evening David covered her hand with his to guide it on the paper. Circles, circles. Make them round, exaggerate. One night he stopped her with his pine-smooth hand as she as leaving and said, Wait for me.

I know what it meant to her, those words, Wait for me. It’s like being in a game where someone yells Freeze! and you stop exactly where you are, hardly breathing, a little off-balance, a study in arrested motion. Chosen out of the many, a woman in the thrall of those words is poised on the death of her past life. She is ready to be told what to do.

Anne waited until David had paid the model and sent her home, put away the art supplies, locked the classroom door. He cupped his hand over her arm and took her to a fashionable bar that overlooked the lake. He drank two martinis right in a row, which gave her time to study his face for the first time. It was, she decided, despite the angular planes of manhood, the face of a brooding child who wasn’t sure he’d be believed. His brows were heavy, and this made his eyes look sad, and the narrow rise of his smile was uncertain, almost tremulous.

Then he told her how he loved the way the light changed her hazel eyes from brown to green to yellow and how her braids in a coronet made her look like a queen. He said, There’s a wickedness in you, a passion inside so powerful it makes you quiet. Am I right? He kept asking, Am I right? until the heat rose in her face and she said, Maybe. Something made her want to weep with gratitude, not because of his adoration, but for his noticing her.

He ordered another martini, took her charcoal smudged hand in his and said, The minute you walked into my class, I said to myself, ‘There’s a woman who feels things, really feels them.’

She thought she should object to his drinking. But she liked the feel of his hand, which was damp and very warm. There was no reason for feeling that his drinking was wrong, even though her mother would say it was, and so she let him talk on and smiled sometimes.

He looked down at the ginger ale she’d ordered. You don’t drink?

She shook her head. It makes me sick. It wasn’t really a lie. Once Michael had sneaked some wine into the house and insisted that she drink some. The wine made her incredibly warm, and for a few moments she thought she’d found the answer to a lifetime of being cold. But as soon as the pleasure settled on her, the bile rose in her throat and she dashed to the bathroom.

Sometimes I wish it made me sick, David said. Maybe I like it too much.

He did not seem to suffer ill effects. He seemed merely intense, his eyes rimmed red with feeling, his words thick, as if losses and yearnings had layered up inside him like fallen leaves. It did not seem wrong for someone to be this way, to see her for the first time, to be an artist, a person who notices the way things are attached: branches to trunks, ankles, elbows, breasts.

When she came home after class one night, her mother met her at the door, her lips pressed thin. She followed Anne up to her room. Then she closed the door behind them both and flung herself at the charcoal nudes Anne had taped to the walls. She tore them down and crumpled the large sheets of paper into balls, her face twisted with rage. She said in a hissing, quiet voice, You are falling my daughter, falling into the darkness of the world.

There was an Army officer at her window at the train station who wouldn’t go away. He had pale blue eyes that would have been cold except that they were filled with admiration for her, and he had taken off his cap to reveal a head of thick, almost black, hair. She slid his ticket under the brass bars, and still he stood there, oblivious to the line of people behind him.

What’s your name? he said.

I don’t think you need my name to get on the train, she said, remembering Alice, who always used to say, Never talk to a man without a proper introduction.

I think you’re beautiful, he said. She tried to frown, gestured to the man behind him to move up to the window. The officer didn’t move aside. You’re a nice girl. I can tell. I want to get to know you. He spoke with an Eastern accent, educated, nice.

I can’t, she said.

You’re not married, he said. So why not?

She pulled herself up tall and pressed her mouth together the way Alice would. I never speak to men without an introduction, she said, embarrassed at the hollow sound of it. She wondered if someone’s being her teacher was as good as an introduction. David had come to her house a few days ago, so her parents had finally met him. This made her seeing him legitimate, she supposed, except that Ruth clearly didn’t like him. She said the word artist like a hiss.

The man at the window shrugged good-naturedly. Okay. And he left.

She was meeting David for dinner again and hoped that tonight he would drink a little less and would not keep trying to take her to bed. His eyes looked like Michael’s, and this frightened her, but then there was the feel of his hands, the fact that he noticed her.