Valley of the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

before,” said Benno.
    “You were only two, Benno. Do you really remember meeting him?”
    “I remember,” he insisted.
    My father had been in San Francisco for the Association of Independent Schools’ annual conference (he was dean of admissions at St. Paul’s School in Newport). He’d arranged to stop by our apartment for dinner: it would be the first time he’d met his grandson.
    “For you,” he’d said to Benno, handing him a loaf of sourdough bread.
    Benno peeked out from behind me, his thumb in his mouth.
    “Say thank you to your grandfather,” I prompted him.
    “He doesn’t have to thank me,” said my father.
    “Yuck crunchy bread,” said Benno.
    I watched my father taking Benno in. His tea-colored skin. His glittering, light brown eyes.
    “I don’t like it either,” my father said. “How about we have your mother cut off the crusts?”
    Benno nodded.
    “We can make bread balls.”
    It was an offering to me. Bread balls were something my father and I did together when I was a little girl. Plucked the white part of the bread out of the loaf and rolled tiny little balls that we dipped in butter and salt and then popped into our mouths. It drove my mother crazy.
    That was all it took. Benno adored my father. He climbed into his lap after dinner and made him read
The Snowy Day
three times. I washed the dishes and fought back tears of relief and resentment. Why had it taken him so long to come around?
    But he hadn’t—not really. When Benno was standing in front of him in the same room, he came around. But when he was three thousand miles away from us, back home in Newport, the distance grew again. His contact with Benno dwindled to a once-a-year birthday card. The incongruity between our realities, the life I’d chosen and the life he’d wanted for me, was too great to reconcile.
    “What if he’s there?” asked Benno.
    “He won’t be.”
    “But what if he is? What do I call him?”
    “Then you call him Grandpa,” I said. “Or Grandfather. Or Mr. Lysander. Or George. Christ, Benno, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him what he wants to be called, but I don’t think it’ll be an issue. You won’t see him.”
    My father had never missed his precious two weeks at the lake. He would not be missing them now.
    —
    I hated airports. They were liminal space. You floated around in them untethered between arrivals and departures. A certain slackness always descended upon me as soon as I walked through the airport doors.
    “Are you scared?” I asked Benno.
    “There’s nothing to be scared of, kid,” said Rhonda. “You’re going on an adventure.”
    “I’m not scared,” he said.
    “Look, babe. The days will be easy. It’s the nighttime that might be hard. That’s when you’ll probably feel homesick. But just make sure you—”
    “Can we go up the escalator?” he interrupted me.
    I stopped and crouched down. “Benno, do you need a hug?”
    He blew a tiny spit bubble. “No, thank you.”
    “Don’t do that, that’s gross.”
    He sucked it in.
    “Well, may I please have a hug?” I asked.
    “I’m busy.”
    “You’re busy? Busy doing what?”
    “Leaving, Mama,” he sighed.
    —
    Abortion wouldn’t be legal in California for another three years, but even if it were, I never would have terminated the pregnancy. Perhaps given different circumstances I’d have chosen differently, but for this baby my choice was life. Of course I didn’t know he’d turn into Benno.
My
Benno. I just knew he needed to come into the world.
    Everybody thought I was crazy. Not only was there no father in the picture, but the father was black. How much harder could I make it for myself—a single white mother with a mixed-race child?
    He brought me such joy. I never knew I was capable of loving somebody the way I loved him. Purely, ragged-heartedly. I couldn’t imagine my life without him in it.
    But my life with him in it was also ridiculously hard. I was a parent twenty-four hours a day.