Catch the Moon

1

Tom had never seen the sun rise through clouds—the way it rippled as if reflected on water, then distorted, long from the bottom, expansive hemisphere above—without thinking, It looks like the mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb.

2

“I don’t think we’ve ever seen dawn here,” Tom said. His tired eyes burned, dew soaked the seat of his jeans, the early morning chill stole across his body from the soles of his bare feet, and he was nervous.

Callie gave a short, mellifluous laugh. Everything about her was musical. She spoke harmony, argued percussion, dreamed an orchestra, made love a symphony. Her green eyes flashed briefly to his, then back over the water. Even when she laughed at his expense, he loved the sound.

“I don’t think you’ve ever seen dawn anywhere,” she said.

He laughed, too. It sounded as anxious as he felt. He told himself he was being foolish. They had dated since college, known each other their entire lives. That was why they were here. The question was just a formality.

3

“Tom, this is our new neighbor for the summer,” Mother says.

Tom stands attentively, staring at the girl in the denim overalls. She has mud on her knees and sneakers. Smudges on her cheeks show where she tried to clean up before visiting and her best efforts came up short. Smudgie-mudgies, Mother calls them, as in, Let Mother wash away those little smudgie-mudgies.

There are adults with the girl. They rise like headless skyscrapers into the glare of the morning sun. From on high they deliver the one piece of information he needs, which crystallizes into a moment he will never forget.

“This is our Calliope,” says the girl’s mom.

Mother and Calliope’s mom keep talking, their husbands politely interjecting to elicit laughter that sounds overloud and too happy. Calliope’s father has a “condition,” and coming to the lake seemed like a good way to “get away from it all.”

The girl steps forward. “I’m Callie,” she says, extending her hand to shake. “Wanna go play by the pier?”

4

“I’m so glad we got to do this,” Tom said.

“I could tell you really wanted to,” Callie said, still studying the water. Something broke the surface not far from where they sat. She didn’t react. “You haven’t mentioned this place since the last summer with your mom.”

Her words fell away. It hadn’t been the end of her sentence, not really, but the memory she evoked demanded respectful silence.

Tom hadn’t considered it, but she was right. He hadn’t thought of the cabin at all since the accident, which had happened a thousand miles from here at the time of year when the lake slumbered beneath a crust of ice. After, Tom had forgotten about the lake, locked it away in a place of special memories that he rarely allowed to resurface. When he bought the ring, though, memories of all those summers seemed to come along with it.

He touched the surface of the red velvet box and closed his eyes. Maybe Mother, in part, had inspired him to bring Callie here for this moment. He had expected it to feel like both their families were here with them, though neither came to the lake anymore. Father said the lake was “a young person’s game,” and Callie’s parents had divorced years ago; but there were phantoms here, visions of endless days and starstruck nights naming constellations and laughing at the formations that might have been.

5

“I think that one’s The Walrus,” Tom says, and Callie nearly sprays Dr Pepper across the pier.

She shakes her head, but it’s a moment until she can correct him. “The walrus does not have external ear flaps. That constellation clearly has external ear flaps.”

Tom collapses to the sanded wood, defeated. Arms thrust upward, fingers grasping, he wails, “The Sea Lion!” then falls limp in defeat.

“The Sea Lion,” Callie says, playfully singing the four syllables.

She settles next to him, a little closer than ever before. He is instantly aware of her heat along the length of his body, of how close her face has come to his own, daring him to turn so that their noses might touch. The only way to avoid touching noses would be something that they’ve been dancing around since summer began.

“I missed you this winter,” she says, and he feels her breath on his ear. He closes his eyes.

“I missed you, too, Callie,” Tom says.

“Tom,” she says. The quiver in her voice tells him that saying his name has given her same thrill that saying hers gave him.

He turns to face her, but their eyes are already closing. It’s the first kiss for either of them—they’ll discuss it later and both of them will believe it to be true—and even though they don’t know what they’re doing they find their way with the stars to guide them.

6

They went inside for breakfast. He made her eggs with a dash of sour cream, the way they had gotten at Serenity Bed and Breakfast in New Hampshire and felt that they had discovered a new reality bursting with pleasure and delight. He thought of putting the ring in the eggs, or at the bottom of the glass he filled with orange juice, but that was just nerves talking. They would be back at the pier soon enough.

If only she hadn’t mentioned Mother, this would all be in the past. They would be celebrating over breakfast, peering into one another’s eyes the way they had across those first, brief summers when I love you wasn’t just something they said but a new discovery that revealed a different reflection with each intonation. 

They had moved quickly to I love you, but they had taken their time getting there. Like so many things in life, it had been quick at the end but forever on its way.

7

“She’s gone,” Tom says into the phone.

“I’m sorry,” Callie says. He hears tears in her voice.

“Four days,” he says, wondering why he is telling her something she knows all too well. “Four days off the machines and then it just happened.” The only reason he stops is because of the wracking sobs. Endless days have come to an abrupt halt, and now the future is a chasm yawning, limitless and empty.

Tom presses the phone against his ear. It grows hot as he cries, but it brings the sound of Callie’s own tears, channels them to his heart by way of his brain. She’s holding him. Their spirits embrace somewhere between the hospital and her father’s new home in Colorado.

When he is quiet again, she whispers, “I wish I could be there.”

“I know,” he says. “But I’m glad you didn’t have to see her like this. You can remember her the way she was.”

“It’s not about that,” she says sharply.

“I know,” he says. “I wish you could be here, too. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I love you has become commonplace, verbal punctuation to end conversations. Tom noticed it last summer at the lake, which will be the last time for three years that he and Callie are there, but he tells himself that everything new becomes old eventually. Relationships are about finding new things and new ways of sharing the old ones. 

8

They argued over lunch plans, so there hadn’t been any time by the lake. Tom brought all the ingredients to make pork dumplings, and he had intended to spend the morning preparing a meal that would take them both back in time to Broadway, when they had seen Les Misérables. Except Callie had corrected him. After the show they had eaten at Sardi’s. She had eaten prosciutto and melon, and Tom had ordered the smoked salmon.

He had persisted, not because he thought she was wrong but because he needed so desperately to be right. He had invested so much—time, effort, his very soul—into making this weekend perfect. Finally, she had listed off a half-dozen clear, succinct points, each driven home by the heel of her hand against the polished tabletop, ending with the fact that they had eaten pork dumplings just once, at the restaurant in Key West, and they had both gotten sick with food poisoning after.

The horrid memory shattered his will to fight. “I’ll make us PB&J, then.”

“No,” she said. “You wanted pork dumplings. We can have that.”

She left. The sound of the cabin door latch struck Tom palpably. His breath rushed from him, and he couldn’t quite catch it again as he worked the dough and prepared the pork. From time to time he peered out at her. She sat in their traditional spot, resting back on her hands, face upturned to the sun. He imagined her sun-kissed legs swaying above the water.

I’m trapped here, he thought. If he went to her, they would have nothing but PB&J for lunch. If he stayed, then they would spend the afternoon apart, with only one more day left in their weekend escape.

“Pork dumplings,” Tom said.

He forced himself back to the counter and worked another forty-five minutes before giving up. No matter how fast he worked, the wrappers dried before he could finish them. The few he got into the pot came apart, exposed pork bobbing to the surface in a cruel jig. Grinding his teeth, Tom shut off the burners, changed into a clean shirt, and nearly ran to the pier.

Callie looked up at him as he came near. She might have been smiling, or it might have been the sun in her eyes.

Crouching before her, the rounded surface of the red velvet box pressing against his leg, Tom relished the opportunity to see those squinted green eyes. He never tired of them. He said, “I want this weekend to be special.”

“I know,” she said.

“I’m sorry that I forgot what we got after Les Mis.”

“I know,” she said again, hitting exactly the same notes.

“Can we just sit here a little while?”

She shifted to one side, returning her gaze to the water. Tom sat, then put his arm around her. She didn’t move away, but her arms remained planted against the wood of the pier behind. He had to loop his arm around the small of her back, beneath both of her extended arms, and rest his hand awkwardly atop one thigh. She did not seem to notice.

“Remember trying to catch the moon?” he asked.

She smiled.

9

They don’t miss a night that summer. Their parents are longtime friends now and Callie’s dad is in remission, so they’re up all hours playing gin rummy with a bottle of Wild Turkey or canasta with Captain Morgan or Cards Against Humanity with Ketel One. The adults don’t miss their wayward children, who spend the same hours together, intoxicated by one another’s company.

There is kissing at the pier, and this season there is also lovemaking, frantic but endless, unutterable promises cascading over the water. In between they name constellations, though they rarely make their own anymore. They also try to catch the moon.

There are endless varieties of stones along the lakeshore, and both Tom and Callie believe themselves to be the preeminent chooser of the world’s best skippers. Each is permitted to collect a half-dozen of the best flat stones they can find, which they pile between them at the end of the pier.

When the ritual preparation is complete, they alternate turns skipping rocks towards the moon’s reflection. The moon presents a large but distant target. Most rocks fall short of the goal. In fact, most attempts fail because of surprise tickle attacks or kissing upon the nape of the neck. Once, though, Callie gets a stone so close that the surface of the moon ripples, dancing beneath the heavens, and they cheer and embrace and fall to shore with limbs entwined.

10

“I want this to work,” Tom said.

“I know,” Callie said.

“I’ll do anything.”

“I know,” she said again, hitting exactly the same notes.

He watched her, realizing that the only times their gazes had met all day was that brief moment this morning while the sun mushroomed over the horizon and once again when the sun might have been blinding her. When she did not return his gaze, he knew it was time to look away. There were questions that should not be asked, because they invited answers that could not be rescinded. But didn’t he have to invite those answers before he could speak the question that had brought them here?

“Callie, have I done something wrong?”

“No.” The answer came immediately, definitively. A lie.

“Are you mad about lunch? I tried to make the dumplings work.”

“The sandwiches were fine.”

“I just…wanted this weekend to be something special.”

“I know.”

She’s giving you her answer, some rational part of Tom’s mind whispered. She’s saying, “Not now,” but if you force the issue, that’s not what she’ll tell you. Take “Not now,” idiot. It’s what she’s willing to give.

Tom opened his mouth. Closed it.

“I love you,” he said, wincing in sure anticipation of her answer.

“I know.”

11

He runs into the room, the phone still in his hand.

“Father’s appendix burst,” he says, and she’s already opening her work calendar to see what she’ll need to reschedule. “I didn’t even know that happened to people his age. I can get a flight that will get me there before they put him under.”

“Get two tickets,” she says, and he stops, really seeing her despite the anguish clouding his world. The tears that spring to his eyes are not of grief.

“I love you,” he gasps.

12

The sun descended in a striation of violet clouds. Neither of them watched. The sky darkened over the lake, midnight blue draining into diamond-studded black. They had not spoken in several hours when she stood.

“I’m going home,” she said.

“You mean…”

“Home, Tom.” Tears stood in her eyes. Tom was on his feet, reaching for her, but she drove him back with a flurry of frantic gestures, as if the thought of his hands on her filled her with momentary panic.

He stared, breathless, terrified.

Instinct commanded him to wait, but fear warned that she would leave if he did. He should have done something in the last three hours but he had failed. Failed Callie. He might have one chance to figure it out, or she was going to walk away, just as her mother had walked away from her father.

Too soon, he admitted defeat. “Why?”

“My dad.” Tears welled in her eyes. Tom wanted to wrap her in his arms, comfort her, but she ended any such thoughts with a single, preemptive glare. She swallowed her pain with clear effort. “He’s worse.”

“Why didn’t you say something? We could have gone—”

“Why didn’t you ask?” Callie’s tone was flat. The realization struck Tom as worse than anything else. Her words had nothing of love in them, no anger or even weariness. There was no music in them.

“I didn’t—”

“You never do.” Her voice tightened, a razor’s edge yearning for blood. “You expect me to chase after you about your childhood, your interests, your mother, your father, but you couldn’t bother to ask what I’d like for lunch on our special weekend. You never asked where I’d like to spend a special weekend. You had to know that something was bothering me, but you never asked. I waited, Tom.” His name was a guillotine. “All this time.”

She swiped at her tears, dirty fingertips leaving trails on her cheeks. Smudgie-wudgies, he thought for the first time in a decade and wished he simply could cease to be.

“Callie,” he said, but it was too late. She was already gone. She said no good-bye. She did not stop at the cabin to get her things. She strode to the car and drove away in a scatter of gravel and red light.

Tom watched her go. At some point he sat. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he lay on his side, tears seeping into the wood, one arm stretched across the spot where she had spent her day.

Later he pushed himself upright. He held the red velvet box for what felt like hours before he let it go, one last shot to catch the moon.

He heard the splash in the darkness. He had fallen short.

13

He sits at the end of the pier watching the clear night sky. Planets gaze down on the darkened world while stars wink and satellites imitate them. Soon, her plane will fly overhead. He has watched her on her way home for years, and he suspects he will do so again next summer and the summer after that, until they are married and never have to be separated again.

Her family isn’t as well-to-do as his own, and the medical bills don’t help, so they cannot stay the extra month like Mother and Father. He has to say good-bye to her early, and he can see that she hates it as much as he does. But they are young, and the best they can give each other is promises that the day will come when nothing can divide them.

There. Flashing red and white lights. Her plane ascends as it departs nearby Lincoln Regional. He watches it rise and dwindle, fading till it is just another sparkle in the night sky. She is gone again until next summer.

“Calliope,” he says, though he never uses her full name when she is around, and the rhythm of her name thrills him.

14

Seconds later, a handful of ripples distorted the moon’s reflection, intimating a mushroom.

Then it was just the moon again.