The Hunger Moon (7 page)

Back at the motel, Renata called her sister.

“Hey, Jess,” she said when her five-year-old niece answered.

“Aunt Rennie, where are you?” Jess whined. “I want to play that game you taught me with the cards.”

“Concentration,” Renata said. “We will. Did you guys have a nice dinner?”

“I don’t like turkey.”

“Well, how about pie?”

“I don’t like pie.”

“Jess, are you having a bad day, honey? Why are you being such a down-in-the-mouth girl?”

“I’m not. Can I talk to Charlie?”

“Charlie’s sleeping, baby.”

“Charlie’s nicer than Tommy, Aunt Rennie. Tommy hits. I wish Charlie was my baby brother and not Tommy.”

“Don’t say that, honey. Tommy won’t hit if you show him that it’s not nice. He’s little, and he has to be taught things.”

“When is Charlie coming back?”

“We’ll visit again.”

“Christmas?”

“No, not this year.”

“How will I give Charlie his present? I’m making him something at school.”

“That’s nice, sweetie. Maybe your mommy will help you send it to him.”

“It’s not the same. I won’t get to see him play with it.”

“You will when we visit. Jess, can I talk to your mommy for a minute? You can get back on after. And you can help Tommy talk on the phone, too.”

“Tommy doesn’t know how to talk on the phone. Only I do.”

“Jess—”

Renata heard the phone drop with a clatter. Minutes later, Marcia came on.

“Hello?” She sounded puzzled.

“Didn’t Jess tell you I was on the line?”

“She said you called, past tense. She didn’t say you were waiting.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake, Marcia. I’m going to call on Thanksgiving, talk to Jess, and hang up?”

“Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. I thought she hung up on
you
. You know how she is with the phone. And how am I supposed to call you back when I don’t even know where the hell you are?”

“If you know how she is with the phone, why don’t you supervise her when she answers?”

“Look, Renata, lighten up. Give me lectures when you have two kids and your two-year-old is busy stuffing mashed potatoes in the toilet. You run to the phone then to supervise your five year old.” Marcia paused. “How’s my Charlie baby, anyway?”

“I’m sorry.” Renata stopped. “He’s doing great, just great. He laughs all the time now, you should see him. He thinks everything’s hilarious.”

“How am I going to see him? First you go to California and miss most of Jess and Tommy’s baby years, and then you take off to God knows where so we have to miss Charlie’s. That’s not healthy, Renata.”

“Uh-oh. You must have gone to one of your group-therapy sessions tonight.”

“You should try a few. They help.”

“Yeah, well.” Renata paused. “Mashed potatoes in the toilet, huh?”

“That’s what you have to look forward to. Did you get a place yet?”

“Yep, signed a lease and everything. It’s nice—real modern and clean, two bedrooms, a deck, underground garage. Then I went to a furniture rental place and picked out a bunch of stuff. They’re going to deliver it on the thirtieth, so when I show up on the first it will be all set up. How’s that for painless?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic.” Renata hated the undercurrent of disapproval that ran through Marcia’s side of these conversations. Why couldn’t she understand that not everyone went about things the same way? Let her go to her support groups. They didn’t, however, seem to cheer her up.

“Look, don’t expect me to applaud. I didn’t want you to leave, and I don’t want you to stay there. We miss you.”

Renata fingered the cord, looked around at the generic motel furnishings. It was the first time it occurred to her that Marcia might have needed
her
. That Renata had let her down.

“What do you think of Boston?” Marcia asked.

“I don’t know. It’s quaint. All these tiny little streets jammed with cars. It takes some getting used to.” She didn’t say that she had driven straight to the neighborhoods of the storybook brownstones with their diminutive walks and been told that the rents were two thousand a month and up.

“Why did you sign a lease? Maybe you won’t like it.”

“We’ll see.”

“Did you start looking for work yet?”

“When I’m settled. I have a lead from Rick, that waiter I knew in California who came from here.”

“Speaking of California. Renata, Bryan called me looking for
you. He says he ran into Rick, who told him you were moving to Boston.”

Instinctively, Renata glanced at Charlie. He was sleeping soundly beside her on the bed in their motel room. Renata leaned over and wiped a little bit of drool from his chin with her index finger.

“Bryan?”

“You know. The father of your child?”

“Marcia, you didn’t tell him.” She pulled the extra blanket up from the foot of the bed and tucked it around herself and Charlie.

“No, I didn’t. But he was real insistent that he get ahold of you. Maybe Rick told him.”

“Well, Rick didn’t know.”

“Are you sure?”

Renata wasn’t sure. She had started to show the slightest bit by the time she quit working, but she didn’t think anyone was scrutinizing her under her loose waitressing blouses. Rick had covered her station once when she had to go to the john and throw up, but she had told him that she was hung over.

“Of course I’m sure.”

“I don’t know what Bryan wanted, but I was able to tell him the truth—that I don’t know your new address. Are you going to give it to me?”

“Yeah. I’ll call you with it later. It’s packed away right now and I can’t remember the street number. I’ll call you when my phone’s working.” Renata needed time to think.

“Well, he gave me his number. He said he just moved, and you wouldn’t know it. He wants you to call him. You want it?”

“No.”

“Renata—”

“Keep the number for me, Marcia. I don’t want it right now.”

After hanging up, Renata curled herself around Charlie, her knees and arms forming a circle around him. He stirred and whimpered slightly in his sleep, rooting to find a nipple. As Renata
was pulling her shirt up for him, his mouth suctioned onto the back of her hand and began working.

“You missed, you kooky little boy,” Renata said, gently disengaging him and repositioning him at the breast. Charlie nursed without waking up. Renata felt the tingling in her breasts as they swelled with blood and milk. As the milk flowed from her to him, Renata relaxed again. When she was nursing the baby there was nothing she wanted, nobody she needed. Before Charlie was born she had had to work hard to feel like this—two or three drinks, a joint, a line of coke. And always the high had an edge to it: she’d be a shade too jumpy, or too out of control, or too foggy, or too speeding. Then there was the coming off of the feeling, like a door opening to a draft, or like a toothache starting. This was an entirely different matter. When Charlie nursed, or when she got Charlie to laugh, she felt as if the feathers of a great white wing were lightly brushing them both. That was how she pictured it: first a darkness, like space, all empty and cold; then a white wing unfolding so large it covered all the darkness, bringing its own warmth and light; then Renata and her baby were nestled inside the wing—cushioned, safe, flying somewhere together.

They were all right by themselves, Charlie and Renata. If she involved Bryan in any way, no matter how small, he would bring his history into it. He would look at Charlie and see himself— for Charlie was daily becoming the image of his father—and they would all start falling again. Bryan would fall, and Renata and the baby would fall right with him, out of the soft rescue of the wing.

T
HEY SPENT ANOTHER WEEK ON THE
C
APE
, going to Provincetown, and taking the ferry from Hyannis to Nantucket. Renata didn’t want to stop driving. This was the last week of their nomadic life and she was nervous about setting up house—it marked the end of their time outside normal rules. On the ferry coming back from Nantucket on the morning of December first, Renata stood at the rail with Charlie and stared at the green water. She loosened her pawnshop wedding band and tossed it into the
foaming wake. When she turned around, an old man sitting on deck in a wool coat and muffler was staring curiously at her.

Renata took her time driving back to Boston. She kept to the speed limit, stayed in the middle lane. When they entered the city it was late afternoon, and dusk was already settling in, making the buildings look like a painting in a dark museum. She got off the expressway and drove out Beacon Street toward Brookline. Red ribbons festooned the gaslight-style lampposts. Many of the brownstones already had Christmas wreaths and lights in their windows.

Renata parked in the loading zone under the apartment awning, unbelted Charlie from his car seat, and ran into the manager’s office to get her keys.

“Your furniture got here fine yesterday,” the manager said. “They were in and out in an hour.”

“Thanks a lot for letting them come in a day early.”

“No problem. And you sure have been getting a lot of packages. I had Sam, the maintenance man, put them in your apartment this morning.”

“I appreciate that.”

“That’s what we’re here for. You let us know if you need to borrow a hammer or a stepladder or anything, and I’ll send Sam by your unit to give you a hand. Welcome to the building. And you, too, little guy,” he said, pinching Charlie’s cheek. Renata hated it when strangers touched him. Charlie took it in stride though, grinning and drooling at everyone without favoritism.

The key card worked smoothly, admitting them to the garage. Renata drove to her assigned spot and unloaded her bags. There were two pieces of luggage now: the large duffel they began with and another tote that Renata had picked up for the extra clothing and blankets Charlie was accumulating. Now that they were settled, Renata would have to buy herself some cold-weather clothes and boots. She couldn’t stand this shivering much longer. With the baby on her arm and the bags at her feet, she pushed the elevator button.

“We’re here, Charlie,” she said, nuzzling him. “Here in your first home.” He smiled, digging his hard little shoes into her side.

When they got to her floor she managed to carry the baby and bags in one ungainly trip down the hall. When she reached her door, she plopped the bags to the ground and fished for the key. The manager had already inserted a printed card with her name into the holder on the door: R.
RIVERA
.

Inside, the furniture had been arranged according to the floor plan she had left with the rental company. Somehow the place looked just like the motels Renata had been staying at.

“Are you ready?” she asked Charlie, bouncing him slightly so that he knew he should feel excited. “Ready for Charlie’s room?” He razzed and brought his hands together to suck. Renata turned on the light and saw the crib with the matching dresser, changing table, and rocker. She gave him a tour of his nursery, stopping so he could grab on to each piece of furniture.

Her packages, piled up in the hall, were from Sears. She had picked up a catalog as soon as she knew what her address would be and ordered things over the phone to be delivered: sheets for her bed and for the crib, towels, dishes, cooking pots, flatware, shower curtain, a touch-tone phone with an answering machine, comforter, baby monitor, baby seat. She set up Charlie’s new bounce seat first so he could watch her open the boxes. Then she gathered all the new baby bedding together to wash.

“Charlie, Mommy’s going to run just to the end of the hall to the laundry room, okay?” She plugged in the baby monitor’s transmitter, and clipped the receiver to her belt. “Mommy can hear you, so don’t you worry.”

His eyes followed her to the door and she smiled reassuringly at him. She locked the door behind her, and jogged down to the laundry room. As she was plugging quarters into the machine, the monitor crackled and she heard him begin to whimper. By the time she reached her apartment door, he was in full wail. She heard it now coming from both the apartment and the receiver clipped to her. As she was reaching for her key, the door next to
hers opened a few inches, and Renata felt herself examined by a neighbor.

“I’m sorry, did the noise bother you?” Renata fumbled to turn down the volume on the monitor; instead she turned it up by mistake. The door opened wider and the woman’s eyes traveled to Renata’s waist.

“What is that contraption?” She was old, but narrow and straight as a ramrod, with beautiful white hair pulled back in a knot.

“It’s so I can hear the baby,” Renata explained.

“I shouldn’t think you’d have much trouble,” the woman said, one corner of her mouth tugging up briefly in what Renata presumed was a smile.

“I’m sorry. He won’t cry as soon as I go to him.”

“Don’t apologize,” the woman said. “I’m Eleanor MacGregor.” She held out her hand. It was dry and cool.

“Renata Rivera. That’s Charlie you hear. We’re moving in.” Renata opened her apartment door so Charlie could see her. He stopped crying and grinned, trying to stretch his arms across the distance. “He’s just inside, if you’d like to meet him.”

The woman stepped into the hall to look through Renata’s doorway. Her face remained impassive, but she said, “He certainly is a fine boy.”

“Would you like to come in? I was just about to call for a pizza. Won’t you join us?”

“Oh, no, dear, thank you. I’ll leave you to your unpacking.” Charlie had been quiet while he stared back at Eleanor MacGregor; now he began to fuss. “I’d say that young man is impatient for your return,” she said, nodding before she disappeared behind her door, its lock clicking into place after her.

R
ENATA ATE HER PIZZA
in front of the rented television, and after the eleven o’clock news, she woke Charlie up for nursing. She loved to pick him up when he was half-asleep and he draped himself against her neck, making mewing sounds. Without turning on his bedroom light, she nursed him in the rocker, changed
him, then lay him down in his crib. He went back to sleep immediately. When Renata got into her own bed, she stretched out luxuriously, then, still awake after ten minutes, rolled to her left side, then her right. She checked the baby monitor and found that its green light was glowing. She got up and tiptoed into his room to make sure he hadn’t kicked off his blankets. He was breathing heavily in his sleep, covered the way she had left him. He didn’t notice that they were apart for the first night in his life.