Maple Street Moon

The moon was on Mrs. Halvorsen’s porch.

It had been there when I walked past at seven, a pale, pocked globe the size of a bathtub, cradled in the wicker swing as if it had come to borrow a cup of sugar. It hummed faintly, like a refrigerator left on the back porch, and when I stopped to look the cat that lived under the swing blinked at it and went back to licking its paws. Mrs. Halvorsen sat on the step with a knitting basket in her lap and a mug of something steaming beside her, and she waved at me as if the sight of a celestial body parked on her stoop were the most ordinary thing in the world.

“Morning, Jonah,” she said. “You’ll want to take the alley today. The paperboy’s got the moon on his route and he’s slow.”

I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. The laugh sounded small and thin. The moon’s surface was warm under the wicker; when I reached out my hand the skin of it gave like a ripe peach and left a faint dust on my fingertips. It smelled faintly of ozone and old pennies. A moth, the size of a saucer, circled it and then settled on a crater and folded its wings as if it had found a comfortable chair.

Across the street, Mr. Alvarez was trimming his hedges. He paused, shears in hand, and nodded toward the porch.

“Gives a nice light for the azaleas,” he said. “Better than those solar bulbs. Saves on the electric.”

A child on a bicycle rode by and rang his bell twice, then slowed to peer. “Is it real?” he asked, as if asking whether the ice cream truck had real ice cream.

“Course it’s real,” his mother said without looking up from her phone. “Don’t touch it. It’s Mrs. Halvorsen’s.”

By nine the mail carrier had arrived, balancing a canvas satchel and a ladder. He set the ladder against the porch railing and climbed up with the practiced ease of someone who had done this before. He opened his satchel and took out a stack of envelopes, a catalog, a postcard of Niagara Falls, and a small padded envelope labeled MOON—HALVORSEN. He tucked the mail into the seam of a crater and tapped it closed with a thumb.

“Signature required?” I asked, because the absurdity of the scene had finally found a voice.

“Not for this one,” the mail carrier said. “She’s on the list.” He winked at me as if we shared a joke about municipal logistics.

People came and went all morning. A delivery truck pulled up and a man in a uniform carried a box of light bulbs up the steps and set it beside the moon. A woman with a stroller paused to adjust the baby’s blanket and then, as if remembering something, reached out and brushed the moon’s surface with the back of her hand. The baby gurgled and the moon made a sound like a bell being struck softly. The woman smiled and said, “There, now you’ve seen the moon up close,” and pushed the stroller on.

At the corner café, the barista set a small saucer of espresso on the counter and, with a flourish, poured a single drop onto the moon’s rim. It steamed and then cooled, and the barista shrugged. “It likes a little caffeine,” she said. “Keeps it from waxing too much.”

I tried to ask questions—how did it get there, who had brought it, whether there was a ladder to the sky—but the answers were always the same: practical, unhurried, and utterly unconcerned with the fact that the moon had taken up residence in a bungalow on Maple Street. The city inspector came by with a clipboard and measured the porch for load-bearing capacity. He made a note about the railing and left a sticker that read SAFE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. A man from the utility company checked the wiring and declared the moon’s glow to be within acceptable lumens. Someone from the historical society took photographs and asked Mrs. Halvorsen if she would sign a waiver.

Children made a game of it. They took turns sitting on the swing and pretending to steer the moon like a ship, shouting commands and laughing when the moth took off in a lazy arc. Teenagers posed for selfies with the moon in the background, lips pursed, thumbs working the screens. A woman in a suit walked by, phone to her ear, and said, “Yes, I’ll be at the meeting—no, the moon’s fine, Mrs. Halvorsen’s got it under control,” and then hurried on.

At noon the mayor arrived in a small convoy, waving and smiling and carrying a ceremonial ribbon. He stood on the sidewalk and gave a speech about community resilience and the importance of local stewardship of national treasures. He thanked Mrs. Halvorsen for her hospitality and announced a festival to celebrate the moon’s stay, to be held the following Saturday. A reporter asked whether the federal government had been notified; the mayor said they had been, and that the federal government had sent a form to be filled out in triplicate.

I watched all of this and felt the world tilt in a way that had nothing to do with gravity. The moon hummed on the porch, and when the sun slid behind the clouds it glowed a soft, domestic silver that made the hydrangeas look like they had been dusted with sugar. The neighbors brought out folding chairs and sat in a circle as if they were at a block party. Someone passed around a casserole dish. Someone else set up a small radio and tuned it to a station playing old jazz. The cat slept on the moon’s shadow.

When I finally spoke up—when I said, “This is not normal”—Mrs. Halvorsen looked at me with the same patient kindness she reserved for stray dogs and lost umbrellas.

“Normal’s a flexible thing, dear,” she said. “You get used to it. You’ll see. Come have some tea.”

I took the cup because refusing felt like an act of defiance against a tide I could not name. The tea was sweet and tasted of lemon and the faint metallic tang of something ancient. I sat on the step and watched the moon, and for a moment its pitted face looked back at me like a neighbor’s face in a window. The moth settled on my knee and folded its wings.

People went about their days as if the sky had merely decided to take a detour. The trains ran on time. The bakery sold out of croissants. A dog chased a squirrel up a tree that cast a shadow over the moon and then barked at nothing at all. The world, in its small, stubborn way, continued.

I left before dusk, because staying felt like waiting for a punchline that would never come. As I walked away, the porch light clicked on and the moon shone steady and domestic, a borrowed lamp in a borrowed life. Behind me, someone laughed at a joke I could not hear. The mayor’s ribbon fluttered in the breeze. The cat opened one eye and went back to sleep.

On the corner, a boy with a paper route folded his papers and tucked them into the moon’s craters with the same care he used for envelopes. He waved at me without looking up.

“See you tomorrow,” he said. “We’re on the crescent shift.”