Robbie had once asked him why the moon didn’t fall out of the sky. That was one of his first big questions. Robbie asked more “why” questions than Bryan. Or maybe it was that he asked more specific ones. Bryan accepted life’s constants more easily. You couldn’t just say “the law of gravity” to Robbie. Dean had to set up a miniature solar system on their kitchen table. The moon was a blueberry. Earth was a Golden Delicious apple. The sun was the basket that held all the fruits. It took forever to explain how the moon could reflect the sun’s light even as it was surrounded by darkness. Dean had to demonstrate how the moon could orbit the earth while at the same time the earth was turning.
“The moon is showing us that it’s sunny somewhere else,” Robbie eventually said. And then Dean knew he understood.
Now, as Dean gazed at the moon, he imagined that it held captive all the sunny moments of his life, starting with his childhood, when his mother was young and wore her hair long, tied back in a handkerchief when she was working in the yard and he would play nearby, bouncing his rubber ball against the walls of his small, sturdy house. And then, elementary school, catching the bus at the end of his dusty lane, playing flag football at recess with his friends, running home on the long dusty lane, talking to his father, helping him to brush the horses, carrying buckets of water to him and small hay bales, too, the twine cutting into the flesh of his palm in a satisfying way. Years and years of these wonderful hours of purely physical happiness, hours that began to break down during his high school years when a kind of willed determination crept in, hardening everything. But still, the sun beating down, the pain in his limbs, the excitement of growing up.
And then Nicole, a woman he remembered as doused in sunlight even though she was the saddest person he’d ever known.
Dean stepped away from the telescope. The moon was small and simple again, without contours, just a silver misshapen disc that looked like it could fall from the sky.
Where, thought Dean, where, where, where? Where is my son?
WHEN ROBBIE WAS feeling bored, or alienated, or out of his depth — when he was in gym class, playing soccer, for instance — he would narrate his circumstances, putting himself in the third person. Robbie Renner stood near the goal in the fullback position, watching as clouds drifted by. He wasn’t cut out for soccer, his thoughts were elsewhere. . It helped him see his life as a story, and he liked stories; you could hold a story in your mind in one piece.
When night first began to fall in the woods, when the moon came out and the shadows got darker and more mysterious, Robbie turned it into the setting of a story. He wasn’t scared, or rather, he was scared, but he would appreciate his own bravery and nerve. He had done it! He was out late at night, on his own, in the world.
But as the night wore on, Robbie’s sense of exhilaration faded. Fatigue and hunger began to creep in, and he couldn’t be a narrator anymore. All he could think of was how hungry he was and how sore his legs were. He had eaten his other Snickers and two boxes of raisins. He had chewed all his gum and drunk the small apple juice he’d saved from lunch, earlier in the day. He was tired of sweet. He wanted something salty now — a grilled cheese sandwich or a plate of scrambled eggs. French fries.
Above, the tree branches creaked. Occasionally he saw the glowing eyes of a small nocturnal creature. He liked seeing them. He wasn’t scared of animals.
He was going to be in so much trouble when this was over.
He could never explain himself to his father. Certain events would come back to him, and he would feel shame spreading through his body. Like the time his father caught him wearing his mother’s clothes. Why had he done that? He couldn’t say. But when he was crouched under his parents’ bed, wearing his mother’s clothes, feeling like the weirdest person in the world, he had heard his father say his mother’s name out loud. And he clung to that.
He told Ms. Lanning about it. Not what his father said, but that he didn’t think it was fair that Stephanie could take and wear his mother’s clothes and no one said anything about it, because she was a girl. If it were the other way around, if his father was gone, not his mother, Robbie knew it would be okay for him to wear his father’s old T-shirts. It would be encouraged, even. Sometimes he wished his father had died instead of his mother. Ms. Lanning said it was okay to have that as a wish. That it was normal, since he had been closer to his mother. Robbie thought it made him evil. Ms. Lanning said she didn’t believe in evil, that it was a theological word. Robbie said it didn’t matter to him if she believed it, he was the one who had to live with the word in his mind. Ms. Lanning asked him what he thought it would be like if his mother had lived, but not his father. But Robbie couldn’t imagine his father dead. It was like his father was more alive than other people. Ms. Lanning said, Yes, I know what you mean.
Robbie’s original plan was to walk until he reached the main road, and then he would find a farm and sleep there, in a shed or a barn. But he had underestimated the distance. Or he had gotten off course. He wasn’t sure at this point.
Ahead, the woods appeared to be getting darker, but he couldn’t be sure. Probably a patch of underbrush. Maybe briars. He could usually walk around them, but at night it was hard to see where they began and ended, even with his flashlight.
A sharp, familiar odor reached his nose. Pines. There was a stand of white pines near his house; he liked to lie beneath them on hot days and listen to the branches whispering above him.
These pines were not white pines — they were something taller and hardier — but Robbie still felt protected as he sat down beneath them. He lay down on his side, resting his head on his arm. Then he changed his mind and gathered some pine needles and leaves into a pile, which he then covered with his scarf. His hands were cold and the tip of his nose was cold, but otherwise, he felt warm enough. He thought, I’ll never fall asleep like this. He remembered his mother telling him it was okay to just rest on the nights when you couldn’t fall asleep. And she would also say, Joy comes in the morning.
Robbie closed his eyes. Sleep broke over his exhausted body like a wave. When he woke up, six hours later, the sun was rising, a pale fragile light drifting through the trees. Birds sang noisily. So much more of the landscape was visible in daylight. He realized there was a field close by; he could see a break ahead in the trees. He hurried over to it; his legs were energetic again, and his body felt light. He was so hungry.
When he reached the edge of the forest, he found himself staring at a large, rolling field, freshly hayed with square bundles of straw deposited at regular intervals. In the distance was a line of telephone poles. The moon hung above the horizon, white in the pearly sky. Robbie checked his compass. Yes, he was heading west. That was good. The road he wanted was right ahead.
STEPHANIE WOKE UP to the sound of children’s voices. She was completely disoriented; she couldn’t remember falling asleep, or where she was or even what day it was. Large square cushions were scattered across the floor in front of a limestone fireplace with blackened logs in its hearth. A phrase floated into her head: Death is the black door you walked through. She didn’t know where it came from, unless it was the residue from a dream.
Then it was as if some window was opened and reality could enter: she was at the Outdoor School, she had driven here last night, Robbie was lost.
“Dad?” She thought she smelled coffee brewing somewhere. She stood up and looked out the window and saw a group of kids lined up to go somewhere, their hats and coats bright against the fading autumn landscape. They couldn’t stand still even as they quieted down; they kept shifting, touching each other, adjusting their clothes, scuffing the ground, and bending down to pick up pebbles, dried leaves, pine needles, clumps of dirt. Stephanie felt so full of longing as she watched them, it was as if she could reach out and touch her childhood. She didn’t want to be a kid again, though. She just wanted her mother back.