Valley of the Moon Read Free Page A

iceboxes, two enormous Dutch stoves, and a slate sink the size of a bathtub. The dining room was a bright and cheery place: southern exposure, redwood floors, and five long trestle tables. Greengage was still small back then, only a few tables full at mealtimes, but I hoped one day every seat at every table would be taken.

    “Please don’t tell anybody about the O’Learys leaving,” I said to Martha.
    “No goodbye party? You just want them to sneak out in the middle of the night like thieves?”
    That’s exactly what I wanted. Leaving was contagious. In 1900, we’d had nearly four hundred people living at Greengage Farm. Now, in 1906, we were just under three hundred.
    “They deserve a proper goodbye.”
    “A small party,” I conceded. “Let’s have it here, rather than the dining hall.”
    “No,” said Martha, putting an end to the conversation. “It will be in the dining hall just like all the rest of the parties.”
    After she went back upstairs, I pulled a small tablet out of my breast pocket. In it, I kept a roster. I found the O’Learys’ names and put lines through them with a pencil. I would just have to look for a new family to replace them.
    —
    The O’Learys left on a beautiful day in April. I’d gone to their cottage before the party I couldn’t bring myself to attend, said my goodbyes, then made my excuses. An upset stomach. I said I was going off to the infirmary in search of an antacid. Instead I climbed up into the hills.
    A hawk circled above my head. I soothed myself by looking down upon Greengage, which looked particularly Edenic that morning, bathed as it was in the late morning sun. All was as it should be. The hens were fat and laying eggs. Sheep grazed in the pastures and bees collected nectar.
    I could see Matteo Sala working in the vineyard. He leaned back on his shovel and wiped his brow with a hankie. He came from a family of Umbrian vintners and was doing what he was born to do—what made him happy and fulfilled. That was the entire point of Greengage. Why would anybody want to live anywhere else?
    The bell gonged, announcing the start of the party. People walked toward the dining hall. Fathers carried their children on their shoulders. Women strolled arm in arm. What was on the menu? Butter and cheese and apples. Mutton stew. Lemonade and beer. The smell of freshly baked sponge cake was in the air.
    I’d worked hard over the years, carefully cultivating relationships outside of Greengage, gaining a solid reputation as a fair and honest businessman. We sold much of what we grew to restaurants in San Francisco and Glen Ellen. It wasn’t difficult. Our produce was magnificent. When asked how we did it, I talked about nitrogen-rich cover crops, compost, some of the traditional Chinese farming methods that we employed. I didn’t tell them our secret: contentment. We were a happy lot.
    “Joseph!” called a woman’s voice from down in the valley.
    My sister, Fancy, had caught sight of me. Now I was doomed. I would have to attend the party.
    “Get down here, you cranky old man!” she shouted.
    She stood in the meadow surrounded by a group of children who all craned their heads up and began shrieking for me as well. My heart filled at the sound of their voices.
    If only I’d brought my camera. I was not a sentimentalist, but I would have liked to have captured that moment. To freeze time in my lens. To be able to gaze back at the image of the party just beginning. To remember precisely how it felt when the pitchers of lemonade were full. When the cake had not yet been cut, and the afternoon stretched out in front of us.
    —
    Early the next morning, before dawn, I went outside to relieve myself. As I was walking back into the house, the floor began to shake. A temblor. I froze in the foyer, waiting for it to stop. It did not.
    Martha shouted from upstairs. “Joseph!”
    “Come down!” I yelled. “It’s an earthquake!”
    Martha appeared at the top of the stairs in her