Free Two Moons by Thomas Mallon

for them to open up, to begin the night’s work by listening to the grind of the retracting metal, terrible groans produced by the unequal settling of the different walls that separated the Observatory’s rivalrous precincts?
    With the institution’s lateral arrangements so rickety, how, Hughwondered, walking south into thicker air, could he construct the ladder he imagined raising into the galaxy?
    “Why, Mrs. Hall!” he cried, greeting the astronomer’s wife. Two doors from the oyster house, she was unexpectedly in front of him, carrying a bolt of cotton cloth. “You must have woven that yourself,” he teased his Georgetown neighbor, “to have acquired it at this hour!”
    “No, Mr. Allison. The dry goods man agreed to stay open late the other day when I placed my order. I told him this would be the only time I could come for it myself. I didn’t trust any of my boys to see that the shopkeeper had secured the right variety.”
    Even in the weak streetlight, he could see dark circles around her eyes. Her nose was long and she was far too thin, but her mouth, Hugh noticed, was an oddly voluptuous Cupid’s bow.
    “And I’ll wager Mr. Hall was unavailable to help,” he said. “Already under the dome?”
    “Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Hall, checking the sky. “The weather’s not good, but I make sure he doesn’t get discouraged. I always get him out the door.”
    “Indeed,” said Hugh, who like every other man at the Observatory knew the story of how Mrs. Hall had years ago taken it upon herself to write the letter that persuaded Captain Gilliss to give Asaph his due by promoting him to professor.
    “Mr. Allison, you went to Harvard, didn’t you?”
    “I did,” Hugh answered. “They indulged me for four years at the College, and then another four and a half at the Observatory. A scandal, really.”
    At the latter he had bounced from one project to another—measuring the mass of Io, peering into the Mare Imbrium dust, finding another star in the Omega Centauri cluster. He had worked well—some said brilliantly—when he worked at all, but over time he’d become occupied by the musings he couldn’t share with his Cambridge colleagues. “A year or so ago they told me it would be an excellent idea to apply for the post that had opened up here. You’d beamazed at how solicitous they were of my professional fortunes.” He soothed Mrs. Hall’s embarrassment by laughing. “I understood the message. And so here I am.”
    “My eldest son is now in Cambridge,” she said. “Preparing for the College’s entrance examinations.”
    “I’ve still got a few books that he could use. Cook’s lectures on chemistry, Wayne’s Apology for Plato. Would you like me to send them up to him? I can assure you they never suffered from overuse.”
    Mrs. Hall nodded. “That would be very kind of you. I don’t like Cambridge, Mr. Allison. I want my young Asaph to succeed there, but I shall never like the city or the College. Mr. Hall and I were there before the war. We had lodgings on North Avenue, and he did computations until they finally began to regard him with some seriousness.” She looked at Hugh with a sort of severe affection; if she could not approve his own lack of ambition, she seemed to like him the better for his having experienced Harvard’s disenchantment. “We were mocked for living on bread and milk, but we persisted, and when we left there for here we had three hundred dollars in the bank.”
    “I’m afraid I had a very easy time of it—my mother sent money whenever she sent a lamp or a cabinet. I’m sure your boy will make more of life there than I did, Mrs. Hall. I can’t say I was a very serious undergraduate.”
    “They always thought me too serious in Cambridge,” she replied. “I suffer from headaches and they called me morbid.”
    “I’ll tell you a secret, Mrs. Hall.” He smiled as he lowered his head and whispered. “I’m morbid, too.”
    “A merry man like yourself? Mr. Hall