The Hunger Moon (24 page)

W
HEN
J
UNE WAS CROSSING THE LOBBY
to leave the apartment building, she felt the pull of something unfinished. She swerved over to Owen’s desk. His face lit up in a smile.

“Owen, did you see Mrs. MacGregor go out this morning? Maybe with her daughter?”

“She went out, early, with Ms. Rivera’s baby. Came back with a man carrying the baby for her.”

June wondered. Was Mrs. M.’s son in town already?

“I just knocked at her door and there was no answer. You didn’t see her go out again?”

“I didn’t see her. Of course I could have been busy talking to someone. Do you want me to ring her apartment for you?”

“Would you?”

He listened to the receiver for several seconds, then shook his head. “No answer. But I personally didn’t see her go out. Maybe she’s sleeping real hard or has the television turned up.”

“What time did Renata and the baby leave?”

He squinted up at the clock. “Oh, I’d say about ten o’clock. They left with the same guy Mrs. MacGregor came in with. I’d never seen him before.”

Now June was really confused. Who was the man? Maybe Renata’s date from last night?

“I’m just going up to check on Mrs. MacGregor since you didn’t see her leave. I have my own key to her apartment. Thanks a lot.”

“Sure. Did you have your audition in New York?”

“I had one today in Boston, as a matter of fact. It went okay. I don’t think I’ll be going to New York for a while, actually.” She fled before he could ask her anything more.

J
UNE KNOCKED AGAIN
on Mrs. MacGregor’s door, rang for good measure, then let herself in with her key.

“Mrs. MacGregor? It’s me, June,” she called as she entered the living room.

The living room looked as it had this morning, neat and undisturbed from June’s cleaning yesterday. The novel by the reading chair was just begun; Mrs. M.’s tasseled marker was inserted near the beginning.

The kitchen had no dirty dishes.

“Mrs. MacGregor?” June called softly as she approached the bedroom door. “Are you sleeping?”

June peered into the dark bedroom and saw that she was, her form silhouetted under the blankets. Her shoes were in the middle of the room. June’s first thought was to back away and let herself out quietly. Then her eyes adjusted to the dark and she saw that Mrs. MacGregor had gone back to bed still wearing her turtleneck sweater.

“Mrs. M.? Are you feeling all right?” She didn’t want to scare her. June crossed the room and bent over her. Mrs. M. was sleeping so still. Her mouth was slightly ajar. With a sudden foreboding, June reached out to touch her cheek. Cold.

“Mrs. MacGregor!” June pulled the covers back to expose the older woman’s body curled into a semifetal position. June pressed her fingers to the cold neck to feel for a pulse. Nothing. Felt for a breath. Nothing.

“Oh, God, God, God, God.” She needed to call a doctor, or
EMT, or something, but her mind was going blank. She punched in the number for the downstairs front desk; Mrs. MacGregor had it taped to the phone.

Owen answered pleasantly.

“Owen! Call 911. Mrs. MacGregor’s sick or something. I can’t make her wake up.”

“Wait there. I’ll call them and bring them up when they come.”

June hung up and stood there in the quiet dark. When the shades were drawn, you couldn’t tell whether it was night or day in this room. Mrs. MacGregor liked it that way.

She sat on the edge of the bed, frightened, but also strangely still inside, now that she knew help was coming. This wasn’t happening; Mrs. MacGregor was surely sleeping, look at her—as whole and real as she had been this morning when they had had a conversation. She fixed a stray wisp of Mrs. M.’s white hair, which had unloosened a bit from the hairpins. Mrs. M. liked to be neat.

She should call Janice; the number was right there on the phone. She would, in a few seconds. She couldn’t speak out loud again yet. Mrs. MacGregor looked beautiful and calm. She didn’t have her makeup on today though, which made her look more fragile than usual. That was probably because June had woken her up early, and Charlie hadn’t given her a chance to put it on.

The implications of this dawned a little at a time. She had pulled Mrs. MacGregor out of bed and thrust the baby in her arms, knowing full well that she was frail, knowing firsthand that Charlie was heavy, knowing that it was her own job to stay with the baby. She had killed her out of pure selfishness, to get to her class. In the distance she could hear the sirens coming, and her thoughts started crying
Run, run, run
, but June continued to sit immobile on the edge of the bed, as breathless and silent as Mrs. MacGregor.

T
HEY HAD A LOT TO TALK ABOUT
. They kept talking without even putting Charlie down for a nap because Renata forgot. He dozed in Bryan’s arms and they were content to let him sleep like that, so they could look at him as they talked.

She was less afraid of Bryan’s presence now that he was actually here. From the beginning she had imagined him as someone who would come between Charlie and herself, though now that she was with the two of them together, she didn’t feel as possessive as she thought she would. A part of her even enjoyed the sudden perspective of seeing Charlie separate from herself, but held by someone who was—after all, it was true—his own flesh and blood.

Renata tried to explain her reasons for leaving. She needed to run away, she said, because it would have been bad luck to stay. Only by starting her life over as if it were the first page of a book could she give Charlie his own future. But Bryan didn’t understand it, kept trying to argue with it, until finally they were exhausted and empty, and decided to go get some breakfast. Charlie woke from his nap and Renata changed him, and then they walked out past Owen, who always had a greeting for Charlie. Charlie seemed to enjoy the higher view that he had from Bryan’s
arms. He kept grinning at Renata from his position of being eye-level with her as if he were proud of himself and wanted her to see.

They went to the coffee shop across the street, where Bryan said he had sat and watched the two of them. He had seen them two days ago, he said, walking out. Charlie had been sitting up in the stroller, bundled in a white blanket and wearing a dark blue knitted cap. Bryan said it was all he could do to keep from running over to them then and there, but he didn’t want to surprise Renata like that. So he had watched them turn a corner, until their profiles disappeared behind a hedge.

They got a table and Renata put Charlie in a high chair. The waitress who came to take their order probably assumed they were a family. They looked like a family.

“Where do we go from here?” Bryan asked her after the waitress left.

“I don’t know; I need time to think.”

“I want a chance to be in his life. Put yourself in my shoes, Renata. If you were me, and you knew you had a kid, how could you just go back to California and pick up where you left off?”

There was no answer to that. Maybe if she let Bryan play out some of his paternal urgings, they would go away. Maybe the less she resisted, the quicker he would see that he belonged back in California, not here with them. After all, he had no idea, really, what he was asking for.

“Okay, Bryan, you can see him, but we have to work this out a little at a time. This is about you and Charlie, not me and you. We’re not a package deal.”

Bryan accepted this with a nod as he fingered a pack of sugar. Charlie tried to reach the packet, and when Bryan put it on the high chair tray for him to play with, he immediately picked it up and stuck it in his mouth.

“Bryan, the paper’s dissolving. Get it out of his mouth. He can’t have sugar,” Renata said crossly.

Bryan extricated the soggy packet, and Charlie screamed with
disappointment. Renata felt a gleam of satisfaction. She gave Charlie a spoon and he stopped crying and stared at it, transfixed by the shiny metal. Then he banged it on the tray before jamming it into his mouth.

Watching Charlie turn off his cry as if a switch had been flipped, Renata felt ashamed of herself for wanting to show Bryan up. Of course she knew little gimmicks to keep the baby happy. Anyone who spent an hour around an infant learned them—look at June. By the end of the first week she had been completely comfortable with Charlie, and had come up with techniques of her own.

“You know what the hardest part of taking care of him is, Bryan?” she said. “Loving him so much you don’t think you can stand it; you think you’ll break from it. Then getting afraid that something will spoil it, and that it will be your fault. He came to me perfect, and sometimes I’m terrified that I’m going to have a moment when I won’t watch him closely enough, and something horrible will happen.”

“You never had to go it alone.”

“That’s not what I meant. I don’t resent the responsibility.”

They were silent when the waitress came with their plates of food, and they started to eat without speaking. Renata was starved. She had ordered eggs and pancakes and hash browns.

“You know, sometimes I think I remember my mother, although I probably just invent her from photographs,” Bryan said.

“I’m sorry, Bryan. I don’t know why I brought that up earlier. It was just crazy talk. I was upset.”

He shook his head. “In my mind I see her face as closeup as if I’m on her lap. That can’t be a real memory, can it?” Shrugging. “Anyway, when I was watching you feed Charlie, I had this good feeling. It jogged something familiar. Or like it should be familiar.”

Renata nodded. She was thinking about how taking care of Charlie was a way of repairing her own childhood—as if she were offering the stuffed animals and night lights directly to the thin, speechless child she had been.

“You don’t have to tell me this,” he said. “But are you going with anybody now? That guy who was with you?”

“That’s the kind of thing we’re not going to talk about,” Renata said firmly. She couldn’t exactly tell him that she had no idea what her relationship with Bill was.

Bryan surprised her by reaching for the check as soon as the waitress put it down, waving Renata’s money away. Then they took a little walk to get some fresh air, and their breath made frosty vapor clouds in front of them. The sky was a high, hard blue, and the sun gleaming on the houses and shops made the day look as if it should be warmer than it was.

“So, who was that lady, anyway, who had Charlie with her this morning?” he asked. “She said she was baby-sitting.”

“She was doing me a favor,” Renata said noncommittally.

“Kind of old to baby-sit, isn’t she? She was confused when I found her. She was sitting on the curb. She called me Robert a few times, then she seemed to snap out of it. I had seen her leave the building with Charlie, and it didn’t even look to me like she could carry him. I was worried, so I followed them, and I think it’s a good thing I did. You don’t use her to baby-sit very often, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” Renata said curtly. “I was in a bind.”

“Where was she going with him?”

“Bryan, I said it was an unusual circumstance; did you arrive in Boston to interrogate me?”

Bryan said nothing, his mouth compressed into a line.

Renata was more frightened than annoyed; her heart started beating fast at the thought of Eleanor dropping Charlie. And she had no idea what they had been doing outside. Eleanor was confused the night her teakettle had burned, too. What had June been thinking? Bryan must never know the whole story of last night. He was being very humble and low-key now, but who could tell what he might be like once he got used to seeing Charlie?

They rounded the block back to the front of the apartment building, and Bryan handed Charlie to Renata. A siren approached. It got louder and louder, until Renata had to wrap
her coat around Charlie’s head to muffle the noise. The ambulance screeched to a halt under the awning of Renata’s building, and the medics hurried to the door carrying a case of equipment and a folded stretcher. Owen buzzed them in and ushered them toward the elevators.

Bryan and Renata looked at each other.

“What’s that about?” he asked.