To See the Moon Again by Jamie Langston Turner Read Free Book Online Page A

saying, “I’ll help you get through this, Jules, but I have to tell you it looks like he left you in a mess,” and, second, a lawn mower starting up right outside the window.
    Looking out the window that day, Julia had seen Gil in his baggy work pants and red suspenders, his broad-brimmed hat pulled down low over his eyes, maneuvering the mower around the base of an oak tree. And she remembered Pamela following her eyes to the window, then saying, “At least you don’t have to worry about your yard along with everything else right now—well, except
paying
him to do it.”
    And that wasn’t the end of it. After Pamela finally packed up and left, Julia had found several dozen handwritten IOUs in an old cigar box, all neatly printed, dated, and signed by Matthew—debts to his card-playing friends, totaling over six thousand dollars, all of which she had insisted on settling out of pride.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    J ULIA waved to Gil now, but he made no sign of having seen her, though she knew he had. She stopped her car and pulled forward onto the circular drive, then eased out onto Ivy Dale and turned in the direction of the library. She and Gil didn’t converse often, as there was little to talk about. They had a routine, and he stuck to his part. She stuck to hers, too, which was to mail him a check at the beginning of every month.
    As she pulled away from the stone house, Julia glanced at Gil in her rearview mirror and thought again about what a colorful character he would make for a story. Tweak him a little, of course, add a limp perhaps, make him more talkative with some quirky speech patterns, maybe give him a more distinctive name, something more obviously foreign, and perhaps a characteristic odor—garlic or cabbage or curry.
    She thought, too, of other people in her life who could also be cast as story characters: Marcy Kingsley, Dr. Boyer the French teacher, old Dr. Kohler, even her sister Pamela, and Pamela’s big sloth of a husband, Butch. And Ida from Wyoming. But it would take a better writer than herself, not just someone with a good eye for detecting idiosyncrasies. A real writer had to be able to create, not just imitate and exaggerate.
    More than once when mentioning her upcoming sabbatical, Dean Moorehead had said to her in his soft, earnest voice, “We know you’ll enjoy some extra time for writing,” which she had taken to mean,
We expect to see you published again
.
    But publication was another one of those things Julia didn’t want to think about. She tried to push the thought away, but it pushed back this time, then began to settle in. She knew her few scholarly essays and two stories didn’t count for much in academia, especially considering the origin of the stories. No one knew about all that, however, and there was certainly nothing to be gained by allowing herself to dwell on it again.
    To her credit, she was a good teacher, a proven teacher, an
excellent
teacher in fact, perfectly capable and fair in her critique of student writing. No one could deny that she had much to offer in the classroom, whether she ever published again or not. Unfortunately, however, publication carried a great deal of weight with deans and department chairs. She knew they were waiting for her to deliver again. She had told her dean a couple of years ago that she was “working on” a novel. What she didn’t tell him was that the only work she had done on it had taken place in her head. She hadn’t actually written down the first word.
    Sitting at a stoplight or eating breakfast or walking across campus, she might think of a perfect opening, but as soon as she picked up a pen or sat down at her computer, doubt set in. She might make several tries but by the end rejected them all as too stilted, too bland, too pretentious, too something. And then an old worry: Maybe she had read those exact words somewhere else and was only