Under the New Moon - Chapter 2

         Sometime past midnight, I arose from bed feeling watched over, with the magic of the river still lingering inside my soul. In spite of the heat outside, I turned off the air-conditioning and opened all the upstairs’ windows. Then I went to bed and closed my eyes. Soon the sweet songs of the river grew rhythmic as they lulled me back to sleep.

          The dance hall contained only women, but Darren was there too and he was dancing with Sheila. All the women danced with cut-out male dolls from the Esquire magazine and nobody asked me to dance. I saw Darren smirk.
The next minute everyone started laughing with their fingers pointing at me, schreeching, “Wallflower!”

         Suddenly through the door, a dark shapeless figure dashed in and pulled me to dance. I couldn’t see the face at all, but the hand that took my own was rough and scaly. We were dancing, gliding, soaring...I felt my body tremble as I witnessed and at the same time took part in this miraculous dance. Someone on the dance floor shrieked, “Laura is dancing with her beast...” No! No! Don’t call me that. I’m not Laura anymore. I’m Lynn. I’m Lynn. Call me Lynn.

         Abruptly I woke up, drenched. Lynn, I called myself out loud. Lynn! Like my parents and everyone else used to call me. Only Darren called me Laura and I had let him.

         The first rays of the dawn were breaking into the room. In spite of the cool morning breeze, it was still steaming inside. I closed the windows and turned on the air conditioning again.

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          “So you moved in already! Welcome! I’m Cynthia.”

         Tamping down the soil around the sapling, I looked up to see an elderly, tall, twig-like lady in a full-length pastel-pink cotton dress. I had to grin at the way she held the digging fork like a staff, as if she were the female half of that famous early American painting.

          “Hello,” I said, “I moved in yesterday.”

         I stood up, wiped my hands on the seat of my jeans, and held out my hand. “I’m Laura Lynn Ferguson.”

          “Nice to meet you, Laura.”

          “Please, call me Lynn. Laura was my mother’s name. My family calls me Lynn.”

         Cynthia took my hand. “Mrs.? Am I right, Lynn?”

          “Yes. But I’m not married anymore. I am divorced several months now.”

          “Oh, I always say drop those no-good ones. Richard is my third. You’re so young and pretty. It should be dime a dozen for you. Especially around here. They’ll crowd around you like bees to honey.”

          “I’m not looking, really. I’ve had it. I think I’ll stay single for a long time to come.”

          “That bad eh? Well, we’ll see about that. Do you have any children, Lynn?”

          “I have a fourteen-year old, Nora. She lives with her father.”

          “You have a big house...Who’ll be living with you then? If you don’t mind my asking...”

          “No, not at all. I live alone. Nora will come to visit me often and I’m hoping my sister and her family can find the time also.”

          “Why are we standing here?” Cynthia laid the digging fork to the side of her lemon tree in between our properties. “Come in the porch with me. We’ll chat over a cold drink.”

          “First, let me close my porch door,” I said.

          “Don’t worry about that. This neighborhood is safe. Nothing ever happens around here.”

         I locked the porch door anyway.

          “Richard,” Cynthia raised her voice sticking her neck out toward the inside of her house. “Bring out some refreshments for Lynn and me.”

         Richard, probably in his seventies, rushed around from the other side of their house like a puppy about to fetch his master’s slippers. He was shorter than Cynthia with dark brown eyes and crew-cut white hair. He took his baseball cap off and waved at me.

          “So glad someone’s next door,” he said when he came out again, this time carrying a tray. “For so long that house has been empty. This place sometimes looks like a ghost town. We are not here all through the year either.” He spooned crushed ice into tall glasses and popped open a couple of ginger ale cans.

          “We’re both retired,” Cynthia handed a glass to me and she took another one for herself. “By the time it is May 15, we’re usually out of here. It gets too warm to bear.”

          “Where do you go?” I asked, sipping the drink with the strong fizz.

          “We have a place in Toronto. We stay there from May to October. They call people like us, snowbirds,” she giggled.

          “How nice,” I said, to be polite. “I’m from Long Island, Port Jefferson to be exact. But the last two years I lived in Westchester.”

          “Hmmmm, Westchester,” Cynthia sounded impressed. Darren should have seen her. That’s why he had us move to Westchester, to impress people.

          “What made you choose this town?” Richard asked.

          “My brother in-law mistakenly bought a condo from General Development in 1987. After my divorce, my sister gave me the keys to the condo and told me to take a vacation. I liked the laid-back atmosphere of the town and started to look for a house here. I liked this house. So here I am drinking your ginger ale.”

          “And we’re so glad you did that,” Cynthia said. “Many come here for a visit, but then end up staying. Some go away in summer because of the heat. This year we’ll be a little late in leaving. Our place in Toronto is getting a new roof. We’re hoping we’ll be out of here by mid-June.”

          “That General Development!” Richard grimaced. “I have to say they built up cities but they swindled an awful lot of unsuspecting people.”

          “You can say that again,” Sylvia said. “Some people were really taken in.”

         “Let me know if you need repairs done,” Richard offered. “I do everything myself. Out of self-defense, I say. It isn’t the cost, mind you. It is the sloppy way they do anything around here.”

          “Thank you so much. I’ll keep that in mind. Right now I’ve been through with all the repairs. I think! I’m sure more will sprout up, once I get to know the house better.”

          “If there’s anything, Dear, anything at all,” Cynthia said, “Do tell us. Please. That’s what neighbors are for.”

          “Thank you and likewise,” I answered. “I want to ask about the previous owners of the house. I never met them. Their attorney took care of the sales.”

          “Oh, the Quinns,” Richard’s face grew solemn. “After the gator got their kid, they moved to Virginia. Nobody has seen them again.”

          “Gator? I thought he drowned.”

          “Yes, that’s true too. We don’t exactly know how. We weren’t here when it happened,” Cynthia said, “That kid loved the water. If he wasn’t in the pool, he was in the river. I heard they got the gator later and killed him. It was a seven-footer. If a gator measures less than four feet long they take them elsewhere. Otherwise these animals return because they can remember the place. They’re a nuisance. Those bigger ones are destroyed if found around the neighborhoods.”

          “Mind you, the gator didn’t eat the kid,” Richard said. “It grabbed him and dragged him down. That’s how he drowned. When a gator sees a small head bobbing up and down, he mistakes it for small prey. I’ll give you a couple of phone numbers, Lynn. If you see anything, call. We don’t need another mishap around here.”

         The night before flashed through my mind but I didn’t say anything. I just couldn’t. ‘Far be it from me to cause the demise of any animal,’ I reasoned inside me, ‘Especially where we humans were the invaders of this alligator-land.’

         I took a few sips from my ginger ale. Meanwhile Cynthia and I turned the conversation around to interior decorating as Richard hobbled into the house for the phone numbers.

          “I’m a licensed decorator, retired though I may be,” Cynthia beamed proudly. “I’ll help you. I know all the furniture stores around here.”

          “Thank you so much,” I said, elated. “Most of the rooms are empty. So far I have my bed. I eat on the kitchen counter. I have my sister’s condo furniture, in wicker, which I put in the porch. Now my sister wants to rent the condo unfurnished year-round, so she told me to take whatever.”

          “Fantastic. We’ll work it out. It will be a joy for me.”

         I’d have liked to see Darren’s face, had he been watching me at that moment. Darren had ridiculed me when I told him I would be moving to Florida.

          “People go there to wait for their death. You’ll be all alone. You can’t make friends very easily.”

          “Not if you take them away from me.”

         That was true. Darren had a habit of going through my friends; that is, through their bedrooms. Those who didn’t let him felt so uncomfortable about the situation that they usually stopped seeing me also. Looking back, I mourned more for those friendships than I’ve ever mourned for my stupid marriage.

         Sheila’s was the last one of those friendships. Sheila was a Westchester widow, strikingly beautiful and rich, who lived next door to us. During the two years I lived in Westchester, she became my best friend. With any other woman the affair would have blown over; I’d look the other way and it would be history. But for Darren, Sheila was too good to pass up. So, Darren was the one who wanted out and I let him go.

         What shocked me the most about this whole thing was not the behavior of Darren or Sheila but that of Nora, my fourteen year-old daughter. Nora, who had never liked Sheila, chose to stay with Darren and Sheila when I moved out to my father’s summer cottage in Quoque. I felt betrayed. Had I imagined a close relationship with my daughter when there wasn’t any?

          “Mom, please understand,” Nora begged me, shaking her blond curls, “And I know you’ll understand because you always do. I don’t want to uproot myself again. And don’t worry; I love you just the same. I know none of this is your fault.”

         It felt as if something weird was running inside that pretty head, but at the time I thought it to be one of those teenage things.

          “I’m going to miss you, Nora,” I said, my eyes tearing up. “I guess it is tough to cut the cord at any age.”

         Nora hid her face on my shoulder and sobbed. “Mom, don’t make it any more difficult than it already is, especially when I’ll miss your cooking.”

         This trying to show justification for her choice... It was evident that she loathed every minute of this. Nora was like me in so many ways, especially when she made choices she couldn’t explain. I had to respect that. I held my daughter tight and said, “You don’t have to give me any reasons, Baby. Sheila and your father will be family and it may work out for you.”

          “Mom, You’re the only family I have,” Nora answered, taken aback. “You and Aunt Justie. Dad isn’t making me stay here anyway. He said I could come live with you whenever I choose to. But I have to stay here. Please don’t ask why.”

          “You’ll tell me when you’re ready. But you’ll visit me often, won’t you?”

          “I sure will,” Nora said strongly. “I love you, Mom.”

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         The library was a brand new building with large floor space and an ample parking lot. It was situated on the same street as my house, about a quarter of a mile down, between the middle school and a small shopping center with Eckerd’s drugstore in its corner.

         At the entrance, in the middle, the first thing that caught my eye was the computer center with eight units. The counter for borrowing books was in front of the left wall, and to the right, a square area probably thirty feet by thirty feet was sectioned off for the children’s books. Further inside, some chairs and tables were strategically placed among the shelves, and in the middle, like a well-to-do physician’s waiting-room, a reading center boasted comfortably cushioned armchairs and a sofa. At the far end, there were several quiet booths each with glass walls and a door.

         It was a relaxing atmosphere for sure. After looking around a bit, I approached the counter, determined not to let timidity and stage-fright interfere with my goal. A black girl with fully rounded face looked up at me from behind her computer.

          “May I help you with something?”

          “Yes, please. I have an appointment with Gwen Robertson. My name is Laura Lynn Ferguson.”

         Gwen Robertson, a trim, serene-looking woman in her late fifties with sharp hazel eyes, asked me to step behind the counter and opened a door I had missed noticing at first glance.

          “This is where we have our staff meetings,” she said.

          “Beautiful library with plenty of space,” I commented.

          “The community had a lot to do with it,” she said. “People pitched in. Half the shelves were filled already before we began ordering books.”

         It would be so convenient for me if I could get the job here. I always loved libraries. This one was built probably within a year or two and it looked fabulous.

         Looking through my papers Gwen Robertson commented, “If you’d rather, there’s another opening at the Indian Head Community College West. The pay and the benefits are much better.”

          “Is there a reason why I can’t work here?”

          “No, not at all. If anything, you’re over-qualified. I said that to just let you know. You’d be perfect here. None of my co-workers are language-savvy. I know Dutch because of my origin. A Spanish girl used to work here but she left. I see that you have worked with quite a few languages. Your résumé doesn’t show any workplace experience during the last fifteen years though.”

          “I wasn’t working outside the home. I translated a few books during that time. Here is a list of those that have been published. I’m really a linguist rather than a librarian, but I think I have enough college credits for both. I also worked in Stony Brook Library before I was married. I have that in my résumé.”

         I didn’t find this interview easy; I wasn’t used to selling myself by re-wording and re-constructing my life like a sacrificial offer at the altar of a job opportunity. Fortunately, Gwen interrupted the interview right there by shoving a document in front of me.

          “I’m delighted,” she said. “Here’s your contract. Look it over and sign it. When can you start?”

          “You tell me. I live close by, a few blocks down the street here. I just moved in.”

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         My stomach muscles contracted as I laced my sneakers. This morning I’d start jogging. I planned to keep to a steady schedule by starting slow and building up gradually. After the decision to relocate, the house, and then the job, this was to be the fourth thing I’d do on my own without anyone prodding me. Usually it would have been a friend, Justine, or Darren. I stomped my feet to loosen my toes, belted my fanny sack on, and rushed out the door.

         It was 6:30 A.M. An elderly couple were on their morning walk across the street; they waved at me and I waved back. I jogged turning to the left where the road curved with the river. There was no housing here. The green edge of the golf course curved around the opposite side of the road. Alongside the road to my right, what was left of a forest blocked out the river’s view for a long stretch. The subtropical light, so clear on the trimmed lawns and white tile roofs, looked even brighter against the shady green of the tiny jungle to my right. ‘This will be a good route away from the traffic,’ I thought, since I also wanted to explore the neighborhood on foot.

         I was going at a good pace when, upon hearing the bark of a dog, I slowed down instantly. From within the vegetation, a reddish-brown shaggy setter leapt in front of me dragging his owner, a young man who was hanging on to the dog’s leash with one hand and carrying a rifle with the other.

          “Hush, Boy! Sorry! Did we scare you?” He grinned, showing through his stark white glistening teeth. With crisply chiseled features on a square face, moss green eyes, a glowing blond head and an impressively built body, he was a young man any girl would love to put the move on. If Sheila would see him, she’d call him, ‘eye-candy’. Embarrassment inched up my face when I realized I was staring at him.

          “Oh, okay. Don’t worry about it,” I muttered forcing my eyes away from him to the rifle.

          “That comes in handy with the critters in there,” he said, holding up the rifle. “Nothing to worry about. I have a license and all.” He talked with an accent, possibly a Louisiana drawl.

          “Sure... Okay, nice to see you,” I said in amazed joy and turned around to jog back home, ordering my thoughts to steer to what was going to be my third day at work and the appointment with Cynthia to go furniture hunting.

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         Newly tagged large-size volumes weighed down the middle of the metal cart. I pushed it to the end section and began putting the books in their places. Feeling a gentle pat on my shoulder, I turned around.

          “Could you help me with something?” A tall man with peppery grey hair and dark chocolate eyes, possibly in his early sixties, stood in front of me. His right hand was gently stroking the books he was holding with his left hand.

          “Certainly. How can I help you?”

          “I’m looking for information on Spanish Civil War, in particular for Americans who fought in that war.”

          “Hemingway comes to mind. You might want to check the isle with the 900 numbers and the next with the 800’s.”

          “I already did that. I need a little more.”

          “We could do an Altavista search.”

          “I did that too. I was wondering if you could request books from other libraries.”

          “I’ll check at the desk,” I said, leaving the cart and walking to the right. He followed me.

          “I come here quite often. I haven’t seen you before.”

          “I just started to work here,” I said.

         A catalogue search showed two books. One was in the library in Stuart, the other in Tampa. At the time we had reciprocity with neither library and I didn’t know if I could file a special request. I asked Elly, the sweet black girl I had met when I had applied for the job. “Gwen would know that but she just stepped out,” she said.

          “I'll make a note of it and I’ll let you know as soon as I can,” I told the man.

          “Please do that. I can’t start the manuscript without enough information.”

          “I’ll see what I can do. Good luck with your manuscript.” Then I recalled an article I had seen. “The other day, I saw something that might interest you in New Times Book Review. It’s a new book just off the press. Something like, Letters from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, if I’m not mistaken with the title.”

          “That would be perfect.”

          “I don’t know if we can get it for you. I’ll mention it during the staff meeting but even if accepted, it will take a few months to process it.”

          “Don’t bother,” he said. “I’ll ask the bookstore in the mall to order it for me. Thank you very much. That was very helpful.”

         Then he held out the two books and his card. “While you’re here, would you check these out for me?”

         I looked at his card while scanning the books. His name was Bruce Watson.



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