Crescent Moon

Catharine Robertson

One of my favorite photos of my husband and me is a tintype taken by a vintage photography enthusiast. We are cradled in the crook of a crescent moon painted with a face. The top of the wooden crescent arches over our heads, while the moon’s heavily lashed eyes and smiling mouth look on approvingly at our union.

Just before the photographer snapped the shutter, I clasped my hands together under my chin, recalling a pose I’d seen in vintage photos. Not like one of those tourist-trap old-timey photo places at the beach, with zoot suits and flapper dresses for posing on a speakeasy set. We are just [author first name and husband first name, to be added if selected for publishing], sitting in a crescent moon. Our black Gen X clothing recedes into the murky background of the tintype. Except for the grinning moon, our faces and my hands are the brightest features in the photo. It appears we are reflecting its light. The rest of us is only a suggestion.

The photo was taken at a pop-up holiday market in the old castle across the street from our row house. “Castle” is its nickname, but it’s a Victorian police station built in 1899. Our house faces the back wall of the police horse stable. The view from our bedroom windows was a selling point when we were looking for a new place to live. On summer days, the east-facing red brick bounces light into our bedroom, coloring our faces sunrise, peach as we wake up.

After it was no longer a police station, the castle’s hipped roof and slated turrets housed an insurance company, a therapy practice, a law office, and a custom wedding gown design studio. The castle was the ideal neighbor–occupied during the day and silent at night. Our early-morning dog walks featured the sight of gathered silk and reams of tulle on dress forms in the studio’s picture window.

The castle is the tallest building by far in the otherwise residential neighborhood. We can’t see the prominent roof line from inside our house, but we can if we walk outside and get a little distance from it. While out walking, I would turn around to appreciate it. The earliest colors came up through the iron cresting and finials–the lacework on the top of the roof framing the spun sugar clouds. Sometimes the setting moon would still be visible for a few minutes until I watched it disappear as the dawn overtook it.

On the November afternoon of the castle fire, we were at the veterinarian for our new puppy’s first checkup. My phone buzzed in my pocket. The doctor was telling Cosmo, “You’re so wiggly, yes you are!” as our neighbor Heidi texted in all caps, “THE CASTLE IS ON FIRE.” The wind was gusting to forty miles an hour in the direction of our house.

Fire trucks clogged the streets closest to home. As we raced to see how close to our door the flames might be, sirens Dopplered down nearby roads and stopped. I heard diesel engines, shouting, and breaking glass. A timid, twelve-week-old Cosmo shook in my arms and my hair whipped my face. Other frightened neighbors walked alongside us, either to get home or just to come see.

When we got close to 34th Street, I saw that the hydrant across the street from our house was connected to two pumper trucks. Hoses fat with high-pressure water snaked up 34th toward Keswick. Inches of water rushed downhill past us. The darkening sky meant the red roller lights painted every surface with emergency.

Once close enough to the castle to see its roof line, I looked up. The entire sky to the west was full of the flames consuming the roof.

Panic kicked my chest in. I had escaped a house fire in the wee hours sixteen years ago in a different house, before I knew Ron. Against the wise counsel of the 911 dispatcher, I had rushed back inside to get my laptop and my car keys and had seen flames inches from where I’d just been sleeping. I had come to develop what I believed was a proportionately fearful respect for fire. I am the party guest who will blow out the unattended scented candle in your house.

During the hours before the firefighters got the castle fire in check, the smell of smoke filled our home. I made us and our closest neighbors pack bags and make an evacuation plan. When Ron said we had packed enough things, I walked up 34th to watch the firefighters wrestle the wind for control of the flames. My tears finally came as sheets of water flooded the inside of the bridal studio windows, soaking the gowns, the paintings, the tulle, and the dress forms.

The owner of the castle vowed to rebuild and scaffolding now surrounds the main building. A sign out front indicates which businesses are still in operation. The bridal gown designer salvaged what she could and eventually reopened in a historic building on the other end of our ZIP code. Above the ruined bridal studio, the fire ate through the roof–except for some of the blackened rafters, whose charred ribs jut into the sky like the carcass of a buck picked over by vultures.

On our predawn walks now, we see pulverized roof slates in the tree wells, turning the soil to graphite. Lengths of carbonized wood carved in 1899 litter the ground. Under its shroud of scaffolding, the castle is completely blacked out overnight. Get close enough and you can still smell the smoke and ruin. But get a block or so away, at the right moment in the lunar cycle, and you can see the crescent moon rising against the silhouette of the torched rafters. You can just about make out the outline of what was there and will be there again. The moon is the only reason you know the building is there at all.