I’d stopped caring what happened to me. I’d walk in the most dangerous places in the middle of the night: Golden Gate Park, the Tenderloin. I courted violence, but it did not court me back. I was invisible. An exiled creature. I had the stink of alien on me. People kept their distance.
In the mornings, after my bender, I’d drag myself to Grace Cathedral up on Nob Hill. It was there, with the light streaming through the stained glass windows, the smell of wood and aftershave and incense, that I felt the presence of Benno, Joseph, and Vivi most strongly. There it was safe to cry.
—
“I see you,” said the man from the end of the pew.
He was a regular. He arrived at the cathedral promptly at seven every morning and left fifteen minutes later. He was younger than me, maybe early thirties. Always dressed impeccably in a suit.
I shook my head at him. I was so used to being ignored that the sound of his voice felt like an assault.
“I see you,” he repeated.
“Please don’t talk to me,” I said.
—
The next morning I came at 7:45. The man sat in the fourth pew from the front. His head bowed. His neck exposed.
What was he doing here? He should have been long gone by now.
I sat in a folding chair to the left of the sacristy, deep in the shadows. A minute later he got up and surveyed the cathedral. I sank low in my seat, but there was no use trying to hide, he was on a mission, hunting me down. He approached, walking quickly, his heels tapping on the floor. He stopped at the top of the row and I held up my hand to ward him off.
“You’ve lost somebody,” he said.
“Shut the hell up.” I was furious he’d invaded my privacy.
He flinched but didn’t move.
“Jesus. Why are you looking at me that way? Do I know you?”
He made a strange sort of croaking noise. “I lost somebody, too,” he said.
By then it had been four years. Lucien and the rest of my extended family were well intentioned and kind, but I knew they thought I should have moved on by now. They wanted me to put down roots in the present, move past Benno’s death, past the Valley of the Moon, past my desperation to get back to Joseph and Vivi.
But this man’s simple act of confession? The communal recognition of our loss? It made me feel like my grief was okay, maybe even appropriate.
“I can’t shut it off,” I said. “They want me to, but I can’t.”
“Some things can’t be shut off,” he said, absolving me. “They can only be borne.”
My pain was bottomless. Benno was gone. My baby. My first. There would be no fighting it. No forgetting about it. No putting it behind me. I would carry it with me forever. This shattering truth. I walked this earth and my son did not.
—
The ride to the Valley of the Moon was the only time I felt free. It was time out of time. Past and present collided. I was twenty-five, having just sent Benno off to Newport, my backpack in the trunk, stuffed with Slim Jims, a copy of The Hobbit, and Rhonda’s stolen peanut butter. I was forty-three, grooves around my eyes, my hair graying at the temples, and thin, so thin, whittled by loss.
I drove down the highway as I had every month for five years, spring, summer, winter, and fall. Nothing had ever stopped me. I’d come when Napa was burning. When the drought was at its worst and the price of water was as high as the price of oil.
Joseph, Joseph, Joseph. Vivi, Vivi, Vivi. Benno, Benno, Benno.
Their names were my open sesame. My prayer.
Lucien’s car parked itself in the lot. The trunk popped open and I grabbed my pack and set out. A cool October day. The temperature would plummet at dusk. I’d need to gather firewood.
I’d learned not to have any expectations. So when I awoke in the middle of the night, freezing cold, needing to pee, and I unzipped my tent and the fog swirled around my head enthusiastically, like it had never abandoned me, never betrayed me, never exiled me from those I loved—I simply said, “Hello.”
I surrendered to it, relief flooding through me. It would bring me home.
And when I stepped into the sunlight moments later, hours later, 1,792 days later, there they were. Joseph and Vivi. In the meadow, waiting for me.
“Is that Mama?” I heard Vivi ask.
“That’s your mama,” said Joseph.
I immediately began sobbing. I had years’ worth of tears stored up. The wetness on my cheeks felt primal and life-sustaining, like milk letting down.
Vivi squinted. “Where’s Ba?”
Joseph came striding toward me—the expression on his face a mixture of alarm, concern, protectiveness.
I fell into his arms.
Lux started from the very beginning; she didn’t leave one thing out. The bus that drove itself. Her escalating panic. The way the door to 428 Elizabeth Street had opened without her even knocking. The sound of her grandson’s voice. The way Lucien’s face had looked when he gently broke the news to her that it was 2064.
Her horror at hearing Benno was gone. The Timestream he’d left for her. The futility of trying to understand what had happened and what it meant. The duality of it all. The timely and untimely, the natural and unnatural loss of her son. Her desperation to get back to us. Her drinking. Her wanting to die. The man in the cathedral. The desperate measures she’d taken. The North Face tent, the Marmot sleeping bag.
The five long years she’d had to wait for the fog to return.
That I was not with her when she learned of Benno’s death was devastating. I would carry that guilt forever.
Vivi was so young—she struggled to understand that her brother was really dead. For her, only a month had passed since she’d last seen Benno. It was virtually impossible to explain to her that in those four short weeks, on the other side of the fog, eighty-one years had gone by. Benno had married, had children and grandchildren. The last time she saw him, he still had baby fat. He’d barely had to shave.
—
“Ba’s never coming back?” she asked as we were putting her to bed. She’d asked that question every night for the past three weeks.
“No,” I said.
“But Mama came back!” she cried. “Why can’t Ba come?”
“Because he’s not there anymore,” said Lux.
“Where is he?”
Lux and I exchanged glances.
“He’s here,” she said, reaching under Vivi’s pillow for the photo.
In the photo Benno was five. It had been taken at the airport, just before he boarded a plane for Newport. The look of anticipation on Benno’s face must have hurt Lux deeply. She’d had no idea what was ahead of her, that later that night she would stumble into Greengage.
Um, hello. The first thing I’d ever heard her say.
Vivi traced the outline of Benno’s face with her finger.
“He looks like me,” Vivi said, her eyes filling.
“Yep, he does,” said Lux. “You guys have the same nose. And the same eyebrows.”
Vivi’s face crumpled. “Ba,” she sobbed.
I remembered standing in my father’s drawing room in London, telling him of my plans for Greengage. The last thing I could remember him saying to me was “Well, you’ve made your choice.” Meaning I’d chosen my dreams over him.
If only our heart’s desires could be reduced so simply. My father had traveled so far from the life he’d been born into, but in the end he couldn’t escape the binary mindset of a gardener’s son. Water the plants and they would grow. Forget to water and they would die. If his son wanted to throw away his life, well, that son was not a son of his any longer.
We made a choice at that moment, Lux and I, and even Vivi. Benno was gone, but he would never be lost to us. He was an autumn wind that bent the trees. He was the soft polished wood of the kitchen table, the leafy smell of the creek on a warm October night.
We live because we are remembered.
—
Lux was forty-three, I was forty-six. I woke u
p stunned to find her there next to me in bed day after day. That we would be together now permanently was the bright spot amidst our sadness.
Slowly the months passed and slowly my family emerged from the cave of our loss. Benno’s death had irrevocably changed us. We were rooted to the earth in a way we hadn’t been before. This wasn’t a bad thing. It was a reminder of our mortality. From this ground we’d come, to this ground we would return.
The nights grew cold. We picked the last of the corn, canned pumpkin and squash. Thanksgiving came and went. And two days before Christmas—snow. Five inches! In all my years at Greengage, we’d never even received a dusting.
We put on our coats and boots and stood in the yard, the three of us. Vivi’s face was pink with wonder, her cheeks tipped up to the sky, her mittened hands outstretched as if in supplication.
“It’s the first time she’s seen snow,” Lux whispered to me. “She has no idea what to do.”
Lux grabbed Vivi by the waist and pulled her down to the ground with her. “Lie next to me, here,” she instructed.
I watched them, my daughter and my beloved, their sweet heads turned toward one another.
“Now do like this,” said Lux, waving her arms up and down.
Vivi imitated her.
“Do you get it? Do you understand what we’re doing?” asked Lux.
Vivi shook her head.
A beatific smile spread across Lux’s face. “We’re making wings,” she said.
—
Four months later, just before dawn, Lux awoke me with a scream. “Joseph! Earthquake!”
She tore the covers off and sprinted down the corridor to Vivi’s room. I followed her, the floors buckling beneath me. I heard a deafening crash from downstairs. The granite slab of the fireplace mantel cracking in two. Chunks of plaster falling from the ceiling. Crockery shattering.
Lux transferred a trembling Vivi into my arms. She’d already outfitted Vivi with the Walkman; music was the best way to calm her down. Vivi had spent much of the last months with those headphones clamped over her ears. She paid homage to her brother by listening to all his favorite bands: the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead. Queen and Prince.
“Daddy,” she whimpered.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” I said. “Close your eyes and press Play.”
I held her close to my chest, shielding her head with the palm of my hand.
We made it down the stairs just before the staircase separated from the landing; it dangled from the second story like a loose tooth. We ran out of the house and stood in the yard, unsure of what to do. Other families stood in front of their cottages just as we did, similar stricken looks on their faces.
The earth groaned and creaked. Chimneys collapsed. Porches sagged. The full moon was a bone-white orb in the sky.
—
People staggered around us, making their way toward the meadow. We all knew the protocol. Earthquake, fire, flood—congregate at the dining hall.
The schoolhouse, the cottages, the dormitories, the winery, the barn, the cooper’s shed, the workshop, every structure had incurred heavy damage. The grain silo had tipped over, crushing the chicken house. My mind immediately conjured up the earlier earthquake that had brought no damage. This quake was its polar opposite.
“Joseph!” shouted Fancy, catching up with us.
Vivi slid out of my arms and ran to her cousin. I embraced my sister. I hadn’t realized until that moment that I’d been holding my breath. “Magnusson?”
“He’s all right. He went to check on the horses. Dear God,” she said.
The earth rumbled again, an aftershock. Vivi threw herself back into my arms.
—
By the time we got to the dining hall, sidestepping debris, climbing over fallen branches, the sun had risen.
It took another hour or so for everyone to gather. We were lucky—other than a few minor injuries, everybody was fine.
Greengage, however, was in ruins.
Despite all the mess—broken china, cutlery scattered all over the floor—the dining hall was structurally sound. The kitchen crew brought out a meal of bread, butter, and fruit. Those who had an appetite ate in stunned silence. Vivi sat on my lap wearing her headphones.
Suddenly Joseph stood. “Did you hear that?” he said.
People looked up from their food.
“Hear what?” I asked.
He bent forward, listening intently. “That. That rumbling.”
“Another aftershock?” I clutched Vivi.
“No, it’s not an aftershock. It sounds—like a wagon,” he said.
Joseph ran out into the meadow, the rest of us trailing behind him. He stopped fifty feet or so from the fog. A moment later we heard the unmistakable sound of an axe slicing through the air and a dull thunk as it hit wood. Then a man’s voice.
“This way!”
The fog swirled and then a patch cleared. For the first time in years, the mist dissipated enough to allow a glimpse into the forest. A wagon was revealed. And then another. And, oh my God, there was a group of men clearing a path.
One of them saw us and lifted his hand in greeting. “There are so many trees downed! We got here as soon as we could.”
The fog gathered, swirled, and thickened again, and the man disappeared.
Joseph turned to me, his eyes wide. “That’s Jake Poppe. He owns the general store in Glen Ellen.”
“The fog!” shouted Fancy. “It’s lifting.”
And it was. The wall of fog that had briefly reasserted itself began to lift again—for good. Great chunks of it floated off. It thinned to a mist, and in a matter of minutes was gone.
Jake Poppe walked toward us, axe slung over his shoulder.
“Joseph,” he said. “Goddamn. Looks like you were hit pretty bad, too. I’d hoped you’d fared better. I’m sorry.”
Joseph pulled Vivi behind him, shielding her from Jake’s view. With one quick movement he palmed Vivi’s headphones off and passed the Walkman to me.
“Do you smell that?” asked Jake.
I dropped the Walkman into the tall grass, then focused on trying to make sense of what had happened. Time had reset itself. It was 1906, the morning of the first earthquake.
And that smell?
That was San Francisco burning to the ground.
—
This was how great change happened. Suddenly and all at once—fate jumped the tracks. An airplane flew into a building. A cough was diagnosed as stage four cancer. A fertilized egg embedded itself in a womb.
All of us lived on fault lines. We just pretended we didn’t.
“Don’t worry,” said Jake, clapping Joseph on the back. “I know it looks bad now. But we’ll clean this up. We’ll rebuild. Who knows what the future holds?”
We, in fact, knew exactly what the future would hold. In eight years the world would be at war. In twelve years 50 million people would die of the Spanish flu, and on October 29, 1929, the stock market would crash. Ethnic cleansings were coming. Genocides. The clearing of the rain forest. Cultures would be lost. Animals would go extinct. A man would walk on the moon and a woman would walk on Mars. There’d be droughts, floods, and blizzards. There’d be a third world war. There’d be another flu—this one so virulent, 100 million would perish.
I looked at my family, at their dear, familiar faces. I thought of the face that was missing. All the faces that were missing. I gathered them in my heart.
We would do this together. We would begin again.
Time no longer tethered us. Love did.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m very thankful to the following people who read early drafts of this novel and offered their expertise, editing, and encouragement: Joanne Hartman, Robin Heller, and Anika Streitfeld. To those who gave their support in myriad different ways: Kerri Arsenault, Brigeda Bank, Laura Barnard, Elizabeth Bernstein, Deni Chambers, Rodes Fishburne, Katie Fox, Sara Gideon, Kaarlo Heiskanen, Roberto Horowitz, Pat Jimenez, Jacob Marx Rice, Lisa Ru
ben, and Mary Ann Walsh.
I’m extremely grateful to my editor, Jennifer Hershey, for her tireless efforts, as well as the rest of the wonderful crew at Ballantine: Gina Centrello, Susan Corcoran, Caroline Cunningham, Sanyu Dillon, Deborah Dwyer, Kristin Fassler, Kim Hovey, Steve Messina, Paolo Pepe, Sharon Propson, Allison Schuster, Matt Schwartz, Scott Shannon, Anne Speyer, Kara Welsh, and Theresa Zoro.
Thanks to Lynne Drew at HarperCollins.
Abiding thanks to my agent, Elizabeth Sheinkman, as well as Tracy Fisher, Amy Fitzgerald, and Alicia Gordon.
And finally I couldn’t have written this book without the support and love of Ben Gideon Rewis and Ben Hunter Rewis.
BY MELANIE GIDEON
Valley of the Moon
Wife 22
The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MELANIE GIDEON is the bestselling author of Wife 22 and The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After. Her books have been published in more than thirty languages. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, More, Shape, and The Times and the Daily Mail in Britain. She was born and raised in Rhode Island. She now lives in the Bay Area with her husband and son.
melaniegideon.com
Facebook.com/MelanieGideonAuthor
@MelanieGideon
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