Moon River, December, 1961 by Vanessa Blakeslee My aunt Sharon has decided who she wants to be: Audrey Hepburn inBreakfast at Tiffany’s . The black-and-white picture skips through the year’s highlights. She had seen the movie with her aunt and my grandmother two months before, a girls’ day out with hats and gloves, but tonight she prefers her incarnation of Holly Golightly— dark hair turbaned in a white towel, skinny legs rocking back and forth in black Capri pants and scuffed flats as she swings her brother’s guitar on her hips, and even though she can’t play, sings, “Moon River, wider than a mile,” even though she is only eleven, the song and George Peppard gazing down from his apartment window have thrilled, captured her. She doesn’t know yet what is opening up: the watershed of human yearning, always the hope for glory. For love. On the television, Mike Wallace narrates a clip from back in May of President Kennedy proclaiming the United States will be the first to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. My aunt stops singing, edges closer to the window, still being Audrey. The towel loosens around her elfin face. She gazes at the full-bright moon, wonders if rivers might run across its glowing, broken surface. theMeadow 29
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