Hang the Moon: a Novel by Jeannette Walls

Author:Jeannette Walls
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2023-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

THE SONG OF CRICKETS and tree frogs drifts through my bedroom window when Kat comes in. It’s late and I was about to put on my nightgown, but she’s dressed like she’s expecting guests. “I like this little room,” she says. “I remember how you said, ‘Cool in the summer and freezing in the winter.’ ” She gives a quiet laugh.

Back when Kat was married to the Duke, she laughed all the time, but in the two weeks since the baby was born I haven’t heard her laugh once. Kat’s a bosomy woman, but when she tried to feed baby Grace, she had no milk. The baby started bawling and Kat panicked. “Don’t worry, hon,” Aunt Faye told her, “happens all the time. The milk will come in a day or two.” She sent for a wet nurse, a young woman named Becca, who lives in a little house down the road and has a two-year-old son just weaning. But Kat’s milk never came. In the days that followed, she watched like a hawk as Becca suckled Grace—then she stopped watching and sat out on the porch.

It was getting worrisome, Kat’s frame of mind, so I’m glad to hear her laugh again. She sits down on my bed and runs a finger along the seams of the patchwork quilt. She’s here for a reason.

“You must miss Seymour something awful,” I say.

“Sallie, there’s something you ought to know. Seymour’s not dead.”

I’m not sure I heard Kat right. Is she lying? Is she joking? Her face is earnest, but it also strikes me as the face of a stranger. I don’t know Kat Johnson one bit. “Why in the world…?”

“To make things easier. We decided to go our separate ways.”

I try to look Kat in the eyes, but she’s staring down at the quilt.

“Thing is,” she continues, “Seymour can be with women. But he”—she searches for the right words—“he’d rather be with men.”

“That can’t be.” That simply cannot be. Kat’s mistaken. To me, to anyone in Claiborne County, that notion—of a man being with another man—is all but unthinkable, something rowdy schoolboys joke about, something preachers call an abomination, but not something that ever really takes place. In France, maybe, but not here in Claiborne County. “That can’t be. Not Seymour.”

“Trust me. Men like Seymour can turn out to be that way.”

“But he was such a ladies’ man.”

“Yes, he was, wasn’t he? I think my first husband knew. That’s why he didn’t mind Seymour keeping me company, even when he was away on business.”

“I still don’t believe it.”

“I’m sorry. I know you always had a sweet spot for him.”

“You could tell?”

“Hard to miss. Anyway, you don’t have to know how I found out about Seymour, but once I got over the shock, I tried to live with it. I even thought maybe I could change him. But every time he went out, I’d get all crazy, wondering who he was with, what he might be up to. And, Sallie, I have to be with a man who wants to be with me.

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