Free To See the Moon Again by Jamie Langston Turner Page A

“How about you—you going back home for a little bit?”
    The question only proved how little Marcy knew about her, though, in all fairness, it more accurately proved how little Julia had shared with her. She shook her head. “No, I won’t be doing that. Nobody’s there anymore.”
    Marcy smiled at her. “Well, if you need anything, you’ll holler, won’t you? Don’t be a stranger. Keep in touch, okay? I’ll sure be lonesome eating by myself in the cafeteria every day. Can we have lunch together sometimes?”
    Julia felt suddenly very tired. Talkative people wore her out, especially when so much of the talk was in the form of questions. She nodded. “Sure, I’ll be around. Give me a call.”
    â€œI’ll do it!” Marcy said. “Bye now, girlfriend! Don’t forget me! Have fun!” She waved, blew a kiss, and as she pulled away gave several toots of her horn. Julia watched her turn the corner and head toward the front gate. Such an innocent soul, Marcy. It was amazing that she had such a friend.
    After Marcy’s car disappeared from sight, Julia went inside Simmons Hall and sat in her office with the blinds open until she could see night falling over the campus. She left the light off so as not to attract attention, in case anyone else happened to be in the building on the evening of graduation day. Presently she heard the slam of a door down the hall, then laughter, followed by “I’m so out of here!” And then all was quiet for a long time.
    At last she rose from her desk, walked to the door, and took a long look around her office. In the months to come, she knew she would think of it often, as a familiar land where she had once lived and one to which she longed to return. Out in the hall she tested the doorknob to make sure it was locked before heading down the dark hallway.
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    O VER the next week Pamela continued to call every evening with the same question: “Did she come yet?” She also said things like, “Well, you need to get on with your life. You’re too tense. I think you ought to pack a suitcase and come see me for a couple of weeks. Sisters
do
usually visit each other, you know.”
    As if it would ease anybody’s tension to spend a week in the same house with an inveterate nail biter like Pamela. Julia always thanked her but declined, claiming she was too tired to pack a suitcase. She hadn’t told Pamela about her sabbatical yet because she dreaded hearing all the questions, all the advice about how she should use the time, especially more hints about visits.
    As the days wore on, she began to allow herself to believe that the threat of Carmen was past. She wasn’t ready yet to open Matthew’s closet, but she busied herself cleaning the back porch and kitchen cupboards, getting her teaching wardrobe washed and pressed and properly stored, watching movies, taking long walks, going back and forth to the library.
    She began reading late into the night. She finished two books about writing, even took some notes to integrate into her lectures. Her colleague had been right about the Stephen King book—it was very good, even though King said bluntly that nobody really needed how-to books in order to learn to write well. You could learn everything you needed to know, he said, by reading and paying attention and rubbing shoulders with people in the normal course of living and working. And by writing, of course. You had to write a lot to learn to write well.
    And this frothy-sounding principle from the other book by a writer she had never heard of: “To achieve the highest mark in fiction, the writer himself must live life fully.” She wrote that down, too. Though insipid, it could launch a class discussion:
What does it mean to live life fully?
    Somewhere in the back of Julia’s mind during the reading of these two books, an intention had