The Hunger Moon (30 page)

“Me, too,” June said. “I can’t keep warm, even with a coat on.”

“It might have something to do with the fact that you don’t have a gram of fat on your entire body,” Renata said. “Seriously, are you trying to be this thin?”

“No,” June said, her voice edgy. “I told you, I had a stomach virus. It’s getting better.”

“Well, take care of yourself.”

“I will. Next week’s spring break, and I plan to sleep for a whole week.”

“Are you and Owen going to do something together?”

“No, I think that’s ending.”

“Oh, June. How come?”

“I know he’s really nice and everything,” June said.

“But not fun enough?”

“I don’t want to say anything bad about him. He’s been totally sweet to me. I’m just not in the mood to be with anyone, I guess.”

“You still miss Eleanor, don’t you?” Renata said. “I do, too. But you’re taking it really hard.”

June shrugged, her face contorting a little. Then she buried her face in Charlie’s hair and Renata saw that she was crying.

Unexpectedly then, Renata was crying, too. She went over to where June was sitting on the couch and put her arm around her. Charlie reached up inquiringly, his hands touching both their cheeks, his mouth open. That made them laugh, and Renata reached for a box of Kleenex.

“Listen, how quick can you pack a bag?” Renata asked. As soon as she said it, she knew it was a mistake, a complication. But she couldn’t take it back; June’s face had lit up, and her arms were already squeezing Charlie with anticipation.

J
UNE WAS GLAD THAT THEY TOOK THE ELEVATOR
straight down to the garage and bypassed Owen at his desk. It had been hard enough walking past him on the way in; he knew June had been making excuses lately for not seeing him, and she couldn’t deal with his hurt feelings right now. When Renata had asked her to go on vacation with them, June felt as if she had been pulled miraculously out of a quagmire. If she weren’t leaving town, she probably
would
have spent her spring break sleeping; it was the only thing she felt capable of. Now she was wide awake. But as they were driving toward her apartment, she was seized with a misgiving. Her father had sent her a check for five hundred dollars a couple of weeks ago, but he had told her to make it last until she found herself a new job.

“Renata? I don’t have a lot of cash to spend on this trip, I just want to let you know. I want to pay my way, but I can’t do anything really expensive.”

“My treat,” Renata said.

“Oh, no, that’s not what I meant, I just didn’t—”

“Forget it. I invited you. But listen, I wasn’t quite straight with you about what I’m doing. For one thing, I’m thinking of going to Maine, not the Cape.”

“Oh. That’s okay.” June was confused.

Renata was staring straight ahead as she drove. Charlie was dozing in his seat.

“The other thing is, I’m going to stay away. When your spring break is over, we’ll put you on a bus back to Boston. But Charlie and I are moving on.”

Now June was really bewildered. “You’re not coming back?” she asked stupidly. Renata pulled up in front of her apartment.

“That’s right. Do you still want to go?”

June nodded, her heart thumping. Something was wrong; she hadn’t seen it before. But now she noticed how Renata’s eyes were swollen and bloodshot, and she suddenly remembered the beer bottles on the counter in the apartment. “Yes, I do want to go,” June said firmly. “Don’t you leave without me. I’ll be back here in five minutes.” She left her knapsack on the front seat. Renata wouldn’t drive away with June’s wallet in the car; the knapsack would anchor her there in case she had second thoughts about taking her. June flew into her apartment and stuffed some clothes and underwear into an overnight bag. She went into her bathroom and scooped up makeup and her toothbrush. She ran back outside and was relieved to see Renata’s car still there.

As she slid into the seat beside her, June felt more alert than she had in weeks. “Now tell me everything,” she commanded as they pulled away from the curb.

It was like pulling teeth to get her started, but Renata finally told June about Bryan’s threat, and how it went back to Renata leaving Bryan when she discovered she was pregnant, and his having to track them down. Renata made it sound as if Bryan were coming after her with an army of lawyers to take Charlie.

“He can’t do that,” June said. “Can he?”

“I don’t know what he can do. The point is, I don’t want to spend my savings hiring lawyers. It should be totally up to me whether Bryan gets to see Charlie. He won’t accept that.”

“But he is Charlie’s father and he seems to love Charlie. Don’t you want them to know each other?”

Renata glanced sharply at June. “June, put yourself in my place. Would you like a judge to tell you how much time you had to let your own son be apart from you? And Bryan probably has a girlfriend; he might even start living with someone. I’m just supposed to kiss Charlie on the cheek and wave bye-bye while he goes off with Bryan and some other woman? I can’t do that.” Renata shook her head, and June admired her fierceness. She knew how it felt to dread a stranger’s presence.

“Does he really have a girlfriend? I thought he was in love with you.”

Renata looked at her. “What makes you say that?”

June didn’t know what had made her say that. Miriam would have said something like “emanations.” She shrugged. “Just an impression. I only met him once. But he came all the way to Boston looking for you.”

“Looking for Charlie,” Renata corrected her. “And as far as having a girlfriend, who knows? He probably does. But it doesn’t matter.”

June looked at the set of her mouth and knew that it did matter; it mattered very much.

B
Y EVENING THEY WERE WELL UP THE COAST OF
M
AINE
. Charlie was wild to get out of his car seat, in spite of the rest stops they had taken. Many of the motels they passed had not yet opened for the season. Finally they found one near a small fishing harbor that had a restaurant adjoining. Their room was paneled in pine and the beds were made up with burnt orange chenille spreads. A tin engraving of a schooner hung on the wall. The lamps had the kind of shades that looked like they had been stitched together by children at camp with large blunt needles and buckskin laces.

“Oh, lord,” said Renata, unloading the car. “I forgot toys. The last time we traveled, he didn’t need any.”

“We’ll find some,” June said. But there was nothing inside to play with but a dusty black plastic ashtray. Charlie lay on the braided rug pushing it back and forth for a few seconds, then he began to cry.

Renata picked him up and nursed him. “You’ll see, Charlie,” she said. “We’ll have fun.”

A
FTER FOUR DAYS IN
M
AINE
, Renata had to admit that she no longer liked life on the road. It’s true that they were in Maine out of season, the rain driving down on the windshield like penny nails, the dampness and loneliness thick in all the rooms they stayed in. But even if circumstances had been better, the fact was that Charlie needed stability. He could no longer wake and sleep according to the car’s engine; he needed to be up at seven, down for a nap at ten, up at eleven-thirty, down at two, up at three-thirty, and down for the night at seven-thirty. He needed his plastic activity table and his baby-gym set. He needed a nice clean carpet to play on. He needed his regular high chair with its familiar view out to the deck.

What Renata needed was a plan. She had studied the small towns they passed through, trying to picture Charlie and herself living in one of them in warmer weather. In her fantasy, seagulls wheeled and called around their little cottage; Renata would serve lobster rolls to vacationing families in some homey café, the kind that tacked postcards to the wall by the cash register. The cost of living would be next to nothing, and she would find some high school girl to stop by afternoons to push Charlie around in his stroller while Renata waited tables during the dinner shift. It
would be the kind of job where the high school girl could bring him in to visit on her break. The whole town would be friendly and casual that way, and Renata and Charlie would soon know everyone.

That was her mental picture, but the fact was, it was March twenty-first and there were no blue skies, let alone tourists, in sight. It would be June before anyone would want to hire her, and even then she would be as temporary as the season, out of work by Labor Day. Her thoughts turned to warmer places, Fort Lauderdale or New Orleans. She would put June on her bus to Boston at the end of the week and begin driving toward sun. Even though she could easily drop June in Boston on her way south, it was best to preserve the illusion in June’s mind that Renata and Charlie were still somewhere north; that way June couldn’t give them away once Bryan went searching for them, as he invariably would.

Renata was behaving like the fugitive she felt herself to be. She used no credit cards and signed a false name on every hotel register. She regretted the goodwill she had squandered by blowing off her job at Viva’s: she had skipped work Saturday night without even a phone call. She regretted the apartment deposit she would be losing at the end of the month when she didn’t show up at the manager’s office to pay her rent. She also regretted the things she had bought for the apartment and left behind, simple things like tablecloths and picture frames, that had made her feel like she was putting down roots. Renata had toyed with the idea of asking June to pack up the apartment for her and send her some things. Then it seemed like a better idea to let the pieces fall where they would. Her life felt like a jackknifed truck, its freight scattered all over the road. She wouldn’t try to minimize the consequences of the accident, or neaten the damage. She would simply walk away, and leave the wreckage complete.

Having June’s company was allowing her to put off the inevitable. For whole moments of the day, Renata felt normal, as if this really were a vacation the three of them were taking, and she
could go back. In spite of the bad weather, they found things to do: bowling, which Charlie loved; arcades, which he also loved; and gift shops, which made him cry because Renata kept him out of reach of all the pretty things he wanted to touch. Renata took a walk alone every day, because once June left, she didn’t know how long it would be before she would have any time to herself. She took these walks without an umbrella, and taught herself not to flinch when the rain struck her.

O
N
F
RIDAY
, R
ENATA PROPOSED
that they drive into town and get a bus schedule.

“I don’t have class until Monday,” June protested. She was panicked at the thought of going back to her studio apartment. There she would have to face the remnants of a semester in which she was behind in every class, and had received an official academic warning from the dean. She would also have to face Owen, who had left a faltering message on her machine while she was gone saying that he guessed she was busy, but would she please call him when she got the chance, because he’d like to know if he had done anything wrong. Once she was home, June knew she would go back to weighing herself four or five times a day, and sleeping until noon. She couldn’t go back; staying with Renata and Charlie was her one hope of climbing out of the dark pit she was in.