The summer was recently gone, too, along with the last tourist, the last humpback, the last of the farm-stand tomatoes. The beach plums were finished and the pumpkins and bushels of corn had arrived. The super moon had yielded its hold on the sky and, a month later, was followed by the affably orange harvest moon. It is the time of the autumnal equinox and the harvest moon rises early in the evening sky, even before the sun sets, bathing the Cape in extraordinary light. It is the time to harvest apples, the last chance to reap what was ripening throughout the summer.
It was the time for Shay to deliver her sons.
An early October morning, and Terrell called me as I was just opening the Galley, to tell me that he was rushing Shay to the hospital.
“We’re on our way,” his jubilant voice boomed over my cell phone as I was just unlocking the front door. It was a dark morning, a fall morning and the sun was still behind me, not ready to rise yet, but I snapped fully awake with Terrell’s words.
“I’ll be there,” I said, catching his excitement. It was going to be a morning of babies!
I shut off the alarms and turned on the lights and started the flattop and hurriedly ran through all the morning work while waiting impatiently for Mrs. A to arrive. Larry called just as I started setting out the Portuguese rolls.
“Let’s go, sister,” he fairly shouted into the phone. “We’re going to be an auntie and uncle. Do you want me to come get you?”
I answered him with a breathless yes, and cut two generous slices of cranberry pecan bread and made two large cups of coffee to go since we were going to need nourishment for the long ride. Mrs. A finally arrived and I gave her the news.
“Oh!” She clapped her hands together. “We are going to have the babies! I’m so happy. A glorious morning! Praise be to Allah! I can’t wait until Sam has children.” She would first have to approve of a wife for him, I thought ruefully.
Larry pulled up half an hour later, his brakes squealing to a stop. I jumped into his car and we raced off to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, about forty minutes away.
“I’m so excited,” I crowed. “It was a tough pregnancy.”
“I know,” he replied. “I could barely get through it.”
We sipped our coffee and I fed him pieces of bread because he didn’t want to be distracted while driving. “Hey,” he said. “I don’t know if I told you, but I’m opening up a new office in P-town. I love the area and I don’t want to commute to Boston anymore. Tons of work here—discrimination cases, mostly, some other stuff, too.”
“You’re almost a Cape Codder,” I said. “You know you have to ride into town on a humpback to make it official.”
He shot me a look and we both laughed. The rest of the ride was spent playing our favorite game, guessing show tunes, the new rule being we couldn’t hum more than a single bar, although his off-key renditions put me at a disadvantage. We picked up flowers along the way, Larry chose a huge arrangement; I bought two blue teddy bears to sit underneath.
“Planning to spoil them from their first breath,” he said.
* * *
Shay was in her room asleep. The babies were in the nursery, and Larry and I elbowed each other out of the way for the first glimpse. They were small and tender and so full of innocence that I was brought to tears. They lay next to each other, pale mocha skin, heads full of dark fuzz, so beautiful, in a drifting, gentle sleep.
Larry stood quietly, then bowed his head. “And from His fullness, we have received, grace upon grace,” he said, and I looked at him.
“That’s biblical.” Our eyes met, and suddenly we were hugging each other.
“Always wanted kids,” he said.
“Me too,” I replied.
We tiptoed into Shay’s room. Terrell was sitting next to her bed and took the flowers. Shay’s eyes flew open.
“I did it,” she said, between kisses and hugs. “It’s over.”
I laughed. “It’s just beginning,” I said, and she smiled and fell asleep.
“We named them Lawrence Shaquille and Alonzo Rasheed,” said Terrell. “For their meanings.”
“They’re perfect,” Larry and I said together.
Terrell took Shay’s hand and stood over her, smiling down at her sleeping form.
Larry took my hand, put a finger to his lips, and led me out the door. We left the new family to be alone, but not ever to be alone again.
* * *
The harvest moon had prevailed for almost four nights, its glow not even starting to diminish. The nights were getting chilly, and the skies were brittle with stars. Sam visited me the next night. We ate dinner in almost silence and I knew that things had changed between us. I didn’t see him on the pier anymore; I guessed he didn’t need to be there.
“Let’s take a walk,” he suggested after we finished eating our tomato soup and cheese sandwiches, and I agreed. He helped me clear the plates and scraped a few leftovers into Vincent’s bowl while I found myself a jacket.
We walked the shoreline and listened to the waves. Vincent followed faithfully, the air was misty from the spray coming in off the bay, and held a real chill. We stood together on the beach and looked out over the water. It reflected the full moon, a harvest of light that covered the bay in a reddish glow.
“I have a few things to tell you,” Sam started, and I had a sudden funny taste in my mouth.
“I’m listening.”
“You know I go to therapy,” he started. “And it’s really helping.”
I had to agree. It had been a while since he entered a room, and slipped around corners, or sat with his back to the wall, afraid of becoming a target.
“I feel stronger than I’ve felt in a long time, and I want to say thank you for being there for me.”
“It was good for me, too,” I said.
“I don’t know where things are going,” he started, “and I’m grateful you’re being patient.”
“Mmm.”
We walked a little more, then turned to the sea again. It was lapping at the shore like a faithful dog.
“I wanted you to know—we just got a new guy,” he said.
“Okay,” I said encouragingly.
“Frank Biljac. I guess you know the name.”
I did. It was the brick thrower.
“He came in for therapy. He’s a vet,” he said. “Iraqi War. He helped get rid of Saddam Hussein. But he’s really fucked up. He vibrates with hate. His probation officer sent him.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah, well, he would like, at some point, to apologize to you.”
“No thanks.”
I said no more, and we let the matter drop. I could hear him breathing next to me.
He took my hand and faced me. “You know I care so much for you,” he said. It was the wrong thing to say. You are not in love with somebody if you care so much for them. You are not crazy in love. I took my hand away.
“Don’t,” I said. “We were good for each other and we needed each other. I’m so glad for that. Let’s keep things the way they are. We are great at being friends.” He dropped his head for a moment and then nodded. We started a long, slow walk, side by side, from the water’s edge to his car before we kissed good-bye.
* * *
I went home and wept. The moon glowed softly through my window, across my walls and my pictures, and I got up to close my shades. There are things that you need to sit in the dark to think about properly. Vincent licked the tears from my face and I wrapped myself around his soft and well-nourished body and we fell asleep together.
* * *
Larry called me two nights later.
“Are you busy?” he asked, as he usually did. “I made a duck terrine with haricot verts.”
“Did you put slivered almonds on the haricots?” I asked.
“It’s implicit in the recipe,” he replied. “Are you up for it?”
I had nothing planned for the evening and it sounded wonderful.
“I’ll bring it over in about an hour,” he said. “And a
bottle of wine. Dessert’s on you.”
“I’m a working girl,” I said. “Would you settle for a box of cookies?”
“Depends on the cookies.”
I laughed. “Okay,” I relented. “I’ll see what I can whip up in one hour.” I raced through my kitchen; plenty of sugar and flour and butter. I had sugar cookies waiting on his arrival.
True to his word, there was a knock at the back door an hour later. Larry was standing there, holding the terrine, one hand up in the air like a waiter and a bottle of wine under his arm. He gave me a peck on the cheek and I invited him in.
Vincent sniffed him approvingly and settled himself under my chair.
Larry helped me set the table, pour the wine he had brought, and set the terrine out like a centerpiece. “Just experimenting with cooking,” he said. “You might want to make it for the Galley.”
“It’s too grand for the Galley,” I demurred.
“But not too grand for us,” he proclaimed.
We ate, we toasted the harvest moon that was peeking through my window, we ate cookies and drank wine and talked for hours. Before he left, he stood in front of me by the back door as though pondering something important. “Yes,” I said, and he leaned over and kissed me on the lips.
“May I see you again?” he asked.
“I already said yes.”
* * *
The harvest moon hung so large and fulsome in the night, I could barely sleep. It left rose-gold shadows across my room and was urging me to come outside. I dressed in warm clothes and took a walk with Vincent. There were things that lay, unsettled, within me that I had to think about and try to put them all neatly in the right drawers. I felt a keen loss over Sam, I had thought we would end up in love, though I know love is elusive and can’t be summoned like a well-behaved dog.
Vincent and I stepped over the seaweed, and the slick little stones that returned sly gleams back to the moon, making our way across the broken shells. This is a beach of broken shells.
But I know now, every once in a while, you can find a shell that is whole and perfect.
I had family out there, somewhere. A great uncle, whom I was sure, had married and had children who had married and had children, so there were cousins yet undiscovered. Someday I would make it a project to find them, but at least I was not the last of my family, and that felt good. And even if I never found them, I had Shay and Terrell, who were true and good and had become family. I had nephews to spoil. I had a good and loyal dog who had brought love and companionship into my life, because that’s what pit bulls are really for.
Vincent and I climbed the steps to the pier and I sat down on the edge. I let my legs swing over the water. I was happy. Sam and I would always be friends, I knew. Larry—I didn’t know where that would lead, though I had grown to really care for him. I loved his compelling personality, his sense of fun—but I was keeping my options open and felt very optimistic.
* * *
The moon was above us, so full and joyous that its luminescence overflowed and encircled us in a golden halo, so filled with pure light, so full, so full, that it couldn’t contain itself, and its enchantment escaped from its surface and spilled down across the bay and the sand, to be magnified and mirrored. My little house on stilts glowed as though possessed by magic. The seaweed looked like silken scarves. The little stones and sea glass were sparkling gems and all the broken shells had become porcelain lace. The night sky was filling with light pirated from faraway stars and distant planets, from all the moons and suns that ever existed, fusing it with this moon, this radiant, moon, this ever-present gift that, it seemed to me, was making the whole world glow with splendor and contentment and peace and such pure love that it would soon saturate the entire universe with eternal happiness.
Like my heart.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
AND ALL THE
PHASES OF
THE MOON
Judy Reene Singer
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included
to enhance your group’s reading of
Judy Reene Singer’s
And All the Phases of the Moon.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Two years after her father’s and her husband’s deaths, Aila is still barely functioning. Do you think that’s too long a period of time to mourn? Is there a right way to mourn?
2. Was it dangerous and foolish to bring home a beaten-up stray pit bull without checking him out more thoroughly?
3. What do you think of Aila’s predilection for sitting alone at night on the pier?
4. In the beginning of the book, Aila paints a bucolic and peaceful picture of Fleetbourne. Were you at all suspicious of her rose-colored view?
5. Do you think the scene concerning Sam trying to buy a truck was realistic or way over the top? Did the car dealer’s punishment go far enough? This scene is based on a real incident that happened at a New Jersey Mercedes dealership, when the salesman refused to sell a car to a man of Indian origin in 2016. How would you have reacted if you were Sam?
6. Do you think Mrs. A was too overprotective or did Sam need that much emotional support until he healed?
7. Was Shay right in keeping Aila out of the picture while she struggled with bigotry during her youth? What are friends for in situations like this? How does race play into that decision?
8. How can one fight vicious hatred and bigotry?
9. Did learning about Mrs. Skipper’s background change your opinion about her? Do you think Aila’s grandmother was really crazy, or heartbroken? How much of her tragedy did she bring upon herself?
10. Were you surprised at Aila’s choices at the end?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Alabama and raised in New York, Judy Reene Singer is a former high school English teacher. When not writing or riding horses, she donates her time to animal rescue. She is the author of Horseplay (Random House, 2004), Still Life with Elephant (Morrow, 2009), and An Inconvenient Elephant (Morrow, 2010).
And All the Phases of the Moon Page 28
