One Saturday late last year, a total eclipse of the sun crossed over the eastern third of the country, including where we live in Mebane, North Carolina. The week before the rare event, dozens of programs on television detailed the approaching astronomical wonder. The local TV and newspapers posted warnings about the dangers of looking directly at the eclipse, followed by demonstrations on how to make an eclipse viewer using a shoebox and construction paper. At school, my children were assigned projects about the sun and moon.
"Did you know, that a long time ago in China they thought an eclipse was when a dragon swallowed the sun?" asked Tyler, my youngest child. "Everyone would run outside and bang pans together to scare it away."
"But it always worked, didn't it?"
Tyler screwed his ten-year-old face into a tight ball. "Well, duh. But it wasn't 'cause of the pans, Mom. The moon just kept moving, is all."
"Ah, but how do you know that it wasn't the pans?"
The night before the eclipse, we watched a documentary about the phenomenon. It mentioned that many early African tribes believed an eclipse occurred when a huge snake emerged from the ocean and grew until it was so large it moved the sky itself and swallowed the sun. They believed, too, the serpent could be frightened away by beating ritual drums. I pondered the eerie similarities between the African and Chinese myths, and I wondered if Tyler had noticed, too. When I glanced over at him, I saw that he was sitting on the couch helping his sister, Wendy, to master some maneuver on his Game Boy. My husband, Brock, dozed in his recliner and so I was left alone to consider the ominous portent of the upcoming heavenly event.
According to the experts, the eclipse was to last less than an hour, with the period of totality occurring for no more than a minute. Half an hour before it was to start, the children and I put on jackets and headed out into the crisp autumn afternoon with our shoeboxes and cardboard. Several neighbors were outside getting ready for the event, with or without their own makeshift viewers. Everyone waved to each other; there was a sense of excitement in the air. Thankfully, the sky was still bright and clear. Tyler looked up from his Game Boy every couple of minutes to ask how much longer until the eclipse.
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At the moment that the moon began to edge in front of the sun, the sky took on a sudden sharpness that surprised me and made me shiver. In that instant, I felt that I understood the fear of the ancient civilizations, and when I looked up, I half expected to see a dragon in the sky. I told Wendy to hurry into the house and ask her father to come outside, but Brock had made it clear just before we’d come outside that he thought all the fuss about the eclipse was silly. If I were to tell him I was afraid, he'd never let me live it down.
Wendy and I shared a viewer and Tyler had his own. We positioned them carefully, and watched the crescents of light on our papers grow while a creeping darkness closed in around us.
"It's almost here," Tyler said, his voice hushed and reverent. "This is so cool."
Then totality came. I had warned the children several times not to look directly at the sun, hating how I sounded like the annoying meteorologists on TV, but when the sky went black shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon, I couldn't resist one quick glance at the incredible and rare phenomenon. I wasn't able to look long, but the image was unforgettable—a perfect black circle surrounded by wavering light, and, extending from each side, white, tapering projections. It was like the sun had invisible wings that could only be seen during the eclipse. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the image of the flying sun stayed, ghostlike, as though seared into my eyelids. It was both scary and beautiful.
"Aw, it's starting to move off," Wendy said.
I opened my eyes to see a sliver of shadow growing on our projection, as if some ancient god was nibbling away the sun. The image flickered, and I realized it was only because I was shaking. After another twenty minutes, the children became bored as the sky lightened and the magic of the moment passed. They headed into the house, but I stayed and stood alone on our front lawn to watch until the light returned and the day became indistinguishable from any other sunny October afternoon.
When I walked into the house, I searched for Brock to tell him about the image of the winged sun, but he wasn't in the den or the kitchen, so I wandered upstairs to our bedroom. The door was closed, which was unusual during the day. When I opened it, Brock was sitting on my side of the bed with the telephone receiver pressed to his ear. He looked up at me and I knew in that instant, even before the subtle widening of his eyes and the quick drop of his smile, that he was seeing another woman. I stood silently with my hand still balanced on the doorknob and studied my husband. My mind registered the familiar things my eyes inventoried—the thinning blond hair with its perfect part, the faded rust-colored flannel shirt, the well-worn jeans—and although it all seemed to say that this man sitting on my bed, hanging up the phone, was Brock, I was staring at a stranger.
There were no explosive arguments, and no tantrum-driven hurling of Brock's things from the second-story window. There were no accusations or denials. That afternoon I moved into the guest room. In the days that followed, Brock and I paced through the house like actors performing roles they had portrayed hundreds of times, speaking memorized lines that were recited on cue. For the most part, the children seemed unaware of the changes. Wendy asked me once why I wasn’t sleeping in my own bedroom, and I told her the truth—that my old bed felt too uncomfortable to sleep in any longer.
After Thanksgiving, I took a job working evenings in the cosmetics department at Belk's department store. I applied for the job on a whim, after reading a notice at a makeup counter during a recent shopping trip. I convinced myself that it would be good for me to gain some financial independence from Brock, but I also knew my true reason was to make sure he stayed home with the kids in the evenings.
As the newest worker, I was assigned the task of spritzing customers with whatever perfume was being promoted on that day. For hours, I'd stand by the mall entrance and watch as people gave me a wide berth and occasional teenage girls approached for a sample. By Christmas, I’d found I could stand amidst the bustling holiday crowd, my lips and hands moving independently, extending and offering the scents automatically. But my mind and heart were no longer distracted enough to hide from the profoundly lonely place I'd found myself in since October.
One evening, a balding, potbellied coworker named Darren asked me if I was married. Without thinking, I said no. He asked me if I wanted to get a drink after closing one night. Without hesitation, I said yes. We drove in separate cars to an Irish pub in Burlington, not far from the mall. We nursed a couple pints of Guinness and Darren revealed he was a widower. We sat in the smoky darkness and chatted about his late wife and grown children and his love of vintage cars. When the bartender announced last call, I leaned over and kissed him on the lips, which tasted bitter from the beer. He blushed, kissed me back, and for the first time since the eclipse, I broke down and cried.
It was after two when I arrived home. From under the closed master bedroom door, a spill of light bled out onto the upstairs hall carpet. I tiptoed past on my way to the bathroom, and when I came out, the light was gone.
Brock and I agreed to split the Christmas shopping for the kids. He would buy Tyler's presents, and I was in charge of Wendy's. On Christmas morning we assembled around the tree as usual and watched the kids tear open their gifts. Brock bought Tyler several expensive electronic toys, while I’d gone just as overboard with Wendy, buying her pricey outfits and a cell phone, even though we'd always agreed she wouldn't get one for another two years.
After a quiet mid-day dinner of baked ham, potatoes au gratin, and my special corn pudding, we wandered off to various parts of the house—the kids to their rooms to play with their new treasures, Brock to watch football, me to the kitchen to clean up after the meal.
Two days later, Brock asked if I would go out with him for New Year's Eve. He said he'd already arranged a sitter for the kids, but if I didn't want to go he'd understand. I was wary, but said okay. He didn't volunteer where we were going, but when I asked how I should dress, he answered "nice," so I bought a new dress at Belk's using my employee discount. While getting dressed, I leaned toward the bathroom mirror to apply mascara and I noticed my hands were shaking.
In the months since I had moved out of our bedroom, Brock, who’s the managing editor of the Burlington Times-Herald, had begun to work mostly at home. He’d acquired the habit of going several days between showers, often wearing the same clothes for days on end. But when I came downstairs for our date, he was standing at the front door with his back to me, letting in the neighbor's teenage daughter. When he turned around, I was shocked by how handsome he looked. He was wearing his best suit, a dark gray with pinstripes that brought out the best in his complexion. He was clean-shaven with a new haircut and he looked wonderful.
We ate an elegant dinner at the Adam's Mark ballroom, during which we talked about mundane things; layoffs at the newspaper, the kids' schoolwork, the warm December weather. By the time the bandleader counted down to midnight, I was a little drunk, and exactly at twelve, Brock leaned over to kiss me. It was tentative at first, but then we both let go and kissed long and hard.
That night I slept in my old bed. We didn't make love right away. We lay spooned in our underwear and when I tried to turn to face Brock, he squeezed me against him so I couldn’t move. He ran his fingers along my arm and eventually down my leg. I reached back and laid my hand on his cheek until, at last, he kissed my neck and I knew I could turn around. He wouldn't look me in the eyes. We held each other and kissed, and when we he finally lay on top of me, we had quick, matter-of-fact sex. But it was enough.
Brock started going back to his office after that, and showered every day, and I quit my job at Belk's, and the sting of those two fragile months faded but has never gone away completely. The children still don't seem to have noticed the danger we were all in and I'm thankful for that.
And this morning as I cleaned Tyler's room less than a week from the anniversary of the eclipse, I found his homemade shoebox viewer under his bed. I was able to look at it and hold it without crying or screaming, and simply remembered the strange and beautiful darkness of that October day--and how brilliant the light was when the eclipse had passed.
