Starry Night (27 page)

Once they were lit and sitting around the table eating and talking, Mom and I sat on the stairs in the shadows and watched.

“My New Year's resolution is to remember to feed and change the water of my lovebird, Pinky. I always forget and my mom yells at me,” Susan Meyers said. All of these girls were in Dinah's class at Hatcher. I recognized some of them from school assemblies. Dinah doesn't have a lot of playdates because of her show. It's kind of sad, but I guess it's a trade-off for fame and fortune.

“Cut! Camera reload!” yelled the director. Dinah and the rest of the girls used the break to say what a good job Susan had done.

“What is
your
New Year's resolution this year, Wrenny?” Mom was still in her pottery clothes. She wears bandannas on her head so her hair doesn't fall into her students' work when she bends over to help them make pots on the wheel. That day she was wearing a light blue bandanna with little yellow rosebuds on it. She smelled like clay.

“I don't know, what's yours?”

“What do you mean you don't know? I don't like that answer.” I'm sure I sighed
. I don't know
is never a good answer for my mother.

“Um, well, I always can be better at putting my stuff in my backpack before bed.”

“Yeah, that would be good … nothing else? I don't know, something more meaningful? Oh wait, they are starting. Shh.”

“
Aannnnnd
action,” said Jeff, the director, from “the village,” which is where the video monitor stands so the director and the key people can watch and see that everything looks okay while they shoot. This time it was Max Burns's time to share. (Max is a girl.)

“I resolve”—they were told that they couldn't all say “My New Year's resolution will be…”; they each had to come up with something more interesting—“to write to my pen pal in Honduras. It's fascinating to learn about a different culture, but if I don't write, I'll never learn.”

“Cut. Let's try that one again. Dinah, maybe you could be passing the hoppin' John during this take,” Jeff said.

“Okay, Jeff. Got it,” Dinah said, like a seasoned pro. The other girls sat up a little straighter and nodded like they were in the loop too. I thought it was good if they were impressed with her.

“Thanks, Dinah. Give us one second and we'll start from the top with Max.”

“You know,” my mother continued (I was hoping she might have forgotten her train of thought). “Is there anything you are aspiring to this year?” she whispered while keeping her eyes on what was going on in the shot.

“Well…” I felt a surge of blood rush to my face and knew I was about to say something I hadn't fully thought through. “I was thinking instead of going to France next year…” She turned her head to me and looked like the word “instead” was vinegar in her mouth, but I continued. “I was thinking I would stay in New York and maybe take classes at the Art Students League?” Then she looked at me like I had slapped her.

“What?” She spasmed. Her neck jutted out at me like she was a lizard about to attack. “What are you talking about?” she hissed.

“I, just, I mean, France is far … and maybe I don't want to go so far away?”

“When,”
she said too loudly, quickly calmed herself, and went back to a whisper as there were fifteen people in our kitchen. “When did you start to think about
that
? You have been dreaming and wanting Saint-Rémy for
so long
, Wren.”

“I know, I know, but maybe, I'm changing my mind.”

“Oh, Wren, you're breaking my heart.”

“What?”

“Yes, yes you are. I don't understand why you would out of nowhere change your mind. Is it because you think you will fail math?”

“No, no that's not it.”

“Jesus, this is going to kill your father,” she said quietly, while pinching the rim of her nose with her pointer finger and thumb.

“I didn't say it was for sure, I just…”

“Have you not finished your portrait?” She looked straight at me again.

“
Annnnddd
action,” the director called.

“I resolve to write my book buddy,” Max Burns said.

“
Cut!
Book buddy?” Jeff almost yelled.

“Sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry. I meant pen pal, sorry!” Poor Max.

“Reset!”
Jeff was going bonkers. It's like Dinah was the only kid he had ever met. And Dinah really isn't a kid.

“Mom, I've tried so hard, but I haven't finished my self-portrait,” I admitted.

“Oh god.” She put her bandanna-covered head in her hands.

“But that isn't why I don't want to go, or why I am changing my mind.” She looked up at me like
, Well, what is then?

“I don't want to leave New York.”

She put her head back down. “Come up to my room.”

*   *   *

My parents' neutrally toned, quiet, mohair and plumped-pillowed room usually felt like a sanctuary, but at that moment it made me think of a padded cell.

“Now, what in the hell are you talking about, Wren?” My mother went to her dressing table, sat on the stool, crossed her legs, and whipped her kerchief off like it was a stupid hat she suddenly was embarrassed to be wearing.

“Mom, calm down.”

“DON'T tell me to calm down. God
almighty
, I hate it when children tell me to calm down.”

“It's not that big a deal,” I lied.

“Goddamn it!”
she slapped her knee. “It
is
a big deal. God, how I hate it when kids say it's no big deal.”

“It's not like I'm failing out of school, or I'm freaking doing drugs!”

“No, no, it isn't, Wren—and there is absolutely no reason to attempt to distract me from the matter at hand by reminding me you don't do drugs—that's a cheap tactic. Here is why it's a big deal.” She spread her legs open and put one hand on each knee.

“It's a big deal because
France
is your dream, Wren. You have been focused on going to
France
since Mrs. Rousseau suggested it was something for you to aim for two years ago.”

“I know,” I said.

She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and zoomed her way to the calendar. “It's—my god, Wren—it's due on the
fifteenth.
It's the tenth!” She clicked off her phone. “It's the tenth,” she repeated sadly.

“Nolan said…” Mom sat straight up and let the hand with her phone in it drop.

“Nolan?
Nolan
has something to do with this?” She stood up with her hands gripping into the sides of her hair and started walking back and forth across the plush woolen wall-to-wall carpeting.

“No, totally not. It's my idea,” I lied.

“That makes no sense. Why did you say Nolan?”

“Because he is supportive of me.”

“And he
supports
this terrible idea of yours that you STOP TRYING?”

“I AM TRYING!”
That was louder than I meant it to be but she started it.

“Do you know what I think?” she said, zeroing in on me.

“No.” I took one step back.

“I think that this
is
Nolan's idea,” she said, while pointing at me.

“It isn't.”

She looked at me the same way she used to look at me when I said I had brushed my teeth and hadn't, but this time she couldn't smell my breath.

“It isn't,”
I insisted. “I just don't want to go anymore.”

“Well, that makes me want to cry.” She did look like she was going to cry.

“Well, I'm sorry.” I felt panicky, like the walls were going to collapse on us. She stood in the middle of the room and looked at her bedside table. On it is a picture of Oliver, Dinah, and me taken from behind so you just see our backs. We are walking on one of the paths in Central Park. I couldn't help but think she was wishing it was that day in the park, when we had a picnic of deli sandwiches on the Great Lawn, and that it wasn't five years later, dealing with me, her failure daughter.

“I'm going downstairs to see Dinah. I can't think of what to say to you.” She steadily walked by me with a steely look on her face. “But I'm sure your father will come up with something.”

 

47

I did not go back down
to the New Year's Eve taping. For the rest of that day I resolved to lie low. I was dying to commiserate with Oliver, but he wasn't home, so I texted with Nolan.

Me:
Hi:-)

Nolan:
Just found out Dad will be in Florida for Xmas dealing with Elaine's dead mom's house.

Me:
Aren't you going to Pittsburgh for Xmas???

Nolan:
Thought so.

Me:
I don't get it.

Nolan:
If I want to see Dad I Have to go to Fla. Not happening.

Me:
Bummed?

Nolan:
Yes.

Then my phone rang.

“Yeah, I'm totally freaking bummed. I can't believe he has to deal so much with
Elaine's shit.
Can't she go by herself?” He sounded mad.

“You would think. Did you tell him you were upset?”

“If he can't figure out I would be upset, then they should freaking take back his PhD.”

“I'm sorry, Nolan.”

“It's okay, it's just, I don't know. Why would I want to go to Florida and stay in some old, deceased woman's house?”

“Wasn't she your step-grandmother?”

“Yes. I'm an asshole, I know, I just really wanted to go to my home in Pittsburgh and see Emme and just hang out.”

“I get it.”

“You do, how?” He sounded cold.

“Maybe I don't get it,” I said quietly.

“I'm sorry, I'm just upset and I don't know what to do.”

“Where are you?”

“Rehearsal, where are you?”

“Home, in my room. I'm studying. I just told my mother that I might not apply to Saint-Rémy.”

“Whoa—wait—you are thinking about that?” His voice melted.

“Yeah.”

“Wow, Wren, that is, god, that is amazing.”

“Well, my mother was rip-shit and I don't think it's going to go over well at all with my father.”

“No, of course not. They want you to go, and there is a huge case for you to go, but…” He was quiet.

“Nolan?”

“I hope there is a case for you to stay. I mean, I really don't want you to go…”

I got up from my desk and went to my window seat. I looked into the sky to see if there were any stars—it gets dark so early in December. I saw an airplane that looked like a moving star, took a shaky breath in, and closed my eyes as if I was going to wish on it.

“I don't want to go either.”

*   *   *

Later that evening, my father said quite clearly that I would be making a detrimental, gigantic mistake if I didn't apply. But he said he couldn't make me do it, that ultimately it was my decision. I didn't finish my self-portrait, and I didn't make the deadline for Saint-Rémy. I had completed all the other required drawings, I had my portfolio in a JPEG, I had my recommendation from Mrs. Rousseau, and by a miracle (and I think because of that time I was grounded) I ended up getting a B average that semester, which is what you need to apply. The December 15 deadline eased on by like the mist outside my windows. Nolan had changed my mind about doing something I'd wanted to do with all my heart. That is the thing about love—for better or worse, it changes you. I
know
that is something no parent wants to hear. There is not a parent out there who can tolerate hearing their kid say, “Even though I got into the University of Success and Happiness, I'm going to defer and not go because of Mark/Madeline/David/Debbie/Troy/Una/Frank. I'm in love.” I think more people than you can imagine have changed the course of their lives because they were grabbed by love and thrown in another direction. And as not-strong as this sounds, I don't think you have much control over it.

There is one part of the conversation-I-had-with-my-father-whom I-chose-to-defy that has stuck with me to this day. We were in the living room. He was sitting by the fireplace with no fire lit. There was no need for it because of the warmer weather and all that fog. He was sitting in his chair in his work clothes—a dark suit and a silk tie from the Met Museum gift shop. Usually he takes his work clothes off and gets into his “at homes,” but not that night. He had a dictionary-size report of some kind on his lap—work. It looked hard and boring. In fact, he told me it was hard and boring, which was weird because he never complains. I was standing in the room, but close enough to the door that I had a clear path out of there. Mom had prepped Dad, and instead of looking mad, he looked exhausted and irritated. The part that got me was he didn't even mention Nolan. It was like Nolan was beside the point. I couldn't understand why the central thing on my mind was the furthest thing from his.

“Wren, I would never in a million years expect this from you.”

“I'm not making some
gargantuan
change, Dad. I just don't want to leave New York right in the middle of
everything.
” I could tell he was wondering what exactly “everything” meant.

“I'm sure it doesn't seem like you are changing anything in the big picture, my darling. I bet you think that you are honoring something as creative and important as the dreams you have for yourself, but you are simply too young to know that kind of thing with certainty and I am here to tell you that you are wrong.” He was carefully choosing the right words. “To compromise
who you are
and where you are going because of
emotion
is bullshit.”