Starry Night (31 page)

Nobody talked about Cy Dowd or my missed application to Saint-Rémy. Sometimes at Christmas, when you have just escaped a famous-artist-pedophile-cocaine-guy or missed an opportunity of a lifetime, you have to pretend everything's okay and just get cozy, even if it's only for one night. I think parents even do that. I think even though they were worried about me (and maybe Farah, who looked like a tramp), they had to put it to the side, because we were there. Everyone, for just one night, wanted to forget what was worrisome, pile on the sofa, get blankets, turn down the lights to watch an old black-and-white movie about the meaning of Christmas, with eggnog, May-the-corgi curled at our feet, and a ten-year-old asleep upstairs.

During the opening credits, Nolan did one small thing that, if I'm being honest, felt weird to me. He stood up from where he was sitting next to me on the sofa, took a throw blanket that was folded on the same sofa behind where Oliver was sitting with Vati, and tossed it to Reagan, who was snuggled on an armchair on the other side of the coffee table. “Here, you look cold,” he said. She looked up at him and smiled, unfolded the blanket and wrapped it around her feet. He came back to me, got under our blanket, grabbed a handful of popcorn from the mixing bowl resting on my stomach, and settled in for the movie.

In retrospect, getting that blanket for Reagan was meaningful, and maybe I knew it at the time, but I chose to put that troubling feeling somewhere else, just for that one night.

 

54

My father has a saying
about what one is supposed to do on vacations. “Eat, sleep, a little fresh air.” And happily that is all my family did that weekend. I slept like I was under a spell until I woke up Monday morning with a bad pit in my stomach. I picked up my phone and texted Charlie.

Me:
Are you up?

Charlie:
No

Me:
Call me.

Two seconds later my phone rang. I had set my ringer to the Shoppe Boys song that Nolan sings about his dad. The one he sang to me in the park.

“Hi,” I said, pushing a pillow behind my back.

“Hi,” Charlie said, sounding very awake.

“Listen—remember when you said Reagan went to all of the Shoppe Boys shows?”

“Yes I do.”

“Your guitar teacher told you, right?”

“Right.”

“I want you to text him and ask him if he ever sees Reagan with Nolan at the shows.”

Silence.

“Charlie, hello?”

Silence.

I looked at my phone to see if the call was still connected. It was.

“Did you hear me? Do you think he ever has seen Nolan with Reagan? Charlie?” My heart was beating fast fast fast, like the heart of a frightened rabbit.

More silence.

“
Charlie
—you are totally freaking me.”

“I don't want to say anything.” Then my rabbit heart plummeted deep into my gut.

“What is it, Charlie? Please tell me. You can tell me.”

“I think something is going on between them, Wren.” I felt my feet break out in a sweat. I moved them around in a cool part of the bottom of my bed.

“I don't get it.” I slid down under the blanket and looked at the ceiling.

“I don't get it either. Paul, my guitar teacher, thought Reagan was Nolan's girlfriend because of the way they act at the concerts. I guess it looks like Nolan thinks
Reagan
is the only girl in New York.”

I felt my throat constrict.

“I have to go,” I barely said.

“Maybe I'm wrong, Wrenny. Maybe Paul doesn't know what he is talking about. But…”

“What?” I felt two thin lines of hot tears race from the corners of my eyes and into my ears.

“There is a picture of them on Facebook that I don't think you would like.” I turned away from the phone and squashed my face into my pillow.
Oh no, no, no, no, no, nooooooo.
“Oh my god, I don't have Facebook!” I whipped around and looked at my stupid, parentally restricted computer.

“I know. Everyone knows you aren't on Facebook because it's so weird.”

“I have to go, I have to call him,” I said frantically.

“Okay, Wrenny. I'm going to go see the
Messiah
with this friend that I met in my bird-watching class in Central Park this fall. It turns out that he's also going to Bard this summer and, well, we both like the
Messiah
, and there is a great choir singing it today at St. John the Divine's, so I invited him to go.”

“Okay, thanks, Charlie,” I said, feeling impatient that he was banging on about birds and a concert, but then, through my panic about Nolan, I tuned in to what he was saying.

“Charlie, are you going on, like, a date with this guy?”

“His name is Arthur.”

I could hear the smile in his voice as he said Arthur's name.

“Arthur!” I felt a surge of happiness for Charlie.

“Yeah, Arthur. He's really cute. And really into birds.” Charlie laughed.

“So are you!” I laughed.

“I know.” There was a nice silence. “Wait, Wrenny, how did you know? About Nolan and Reagan? How did you find out?”

“I didn't—I think I was just following my heart.”

“Okay. I'm sorry, Wren. I hope it's not true.”

“Yeah, it may not be true, right?”

“Right, maybe.” He sounded like he thought it was true.

“Okay, bye. Have fun today. Bye.”

“Okay, I will. Good luck. Bye.” He hung up.

I tried to catch my breath. I had to pee. I was thirsty. It was dark in my room because the curtains were closed, and all of a sudden I couldn't stand the darkness, so I got out of bed and ripped them open. It was bright bright bright outside. The fog was gone. The sun was blaring and the sky was a terrible shade of the most shocking blue—too blue. I texted Nolan.

Me:
Can you meet me on the Met steps?

Nolan:
Yeah, when? Good morning btw.

Me:
Eleven. I have to get my dad a tie.

Nolan:
See you there. xxxx

I threw my phone on my bed with all my might. It bounced and flipped down into the space between the bed and the wall. I scrambled over the sheets and pillows. My hair was in my face. I reached behind the mattress and jammed my arm down along the wall. My phone had gone to a place on the floor where I couldn't reach so I'd have to pull the bed away from the wall to get it. I jumped up and yanked back the cast-iron headboard. My huge drawings portfolio that I keep between the bed and the wall opened—I must have forgotten to tie the ribbon on the top the last time I drew. The two sides separated like a huge cardboard mouth and a piece of newsprint that had been trapped wavered and buckled in the empty space. It was the picture I drew of the owl flying into the air. The picture I drew right after Nolan gave me that beautiful note. The picture that made me feel like the two of us could fly away together. I took it to the open space in the middle of the room and let it float out of my hands onto the floor. The feathers in the drawing fluttered and shimmered in the light. I didn't remember drawing so many. The owl's face was turned up, her fierce, delighted eyes looking at the edge of the paper where she would soon blast off so she could fly way, way up. It was a breathtaking, big, bold drawing made when I felt that crazy flush of infatuation and excitement and promise and happiness. And love.

I got down on my knees and ripped it into a thousand pieces.

 

55

I hoped I would be able to escape out
the door without anyone asking where I was going, as I was on vacation, but no, Mom was in the kitchen wrapping presents. She was still in her bathrobe. The radio was on. Two women were talking about a bestselling novel in hushed, oily tones.

“What's up, buttercup? Hey, give me your finger, will you?” She held up both ends of a two-inch-thick blood-red ribbon and nodded her head down, indicating that I had to put my finger in the middle so she could tie a bow. I did it. My mother wraps everything in newspaper and burlap sacks but uses really fancy ribbon. “Thank you!” she said, and tugged the loops into a bow that would make Martha Stewart weep.

“I gotta go, Mom.”

“Hey—you look worried.” She stood up and pulled my hair back into a ponytail (something she does to see if I'm sick or not). “Are you sick?”

“Well, I feel like I'm going to throw up, so yes. Sort of.”

“Tell me. I know something is wrong. Where is Oliver?” she said, with her most concerned look on her face.

“How am I supposed to know?”

“I don't know—what's the matter?” She sat on a chair and pulled out the one next to her and gave it a pat.

“Sit. Or do you want to eat something? You're not taking your pill today, right?” I shook my head back and forth—there was no school.

“No, no, Mom. I feel awful.”

“
Why
, darling? God, will you turn off NPR? I can't concentrate.”

I stood up, walked around the island, got the clicker for the Bose, and muted the radio. The silence made a space for me to burst into tears.

“Oh, my baby.” I heard the hornlike noise of her chair pushing back on the floor. “No no no no, what is happening?” My mother was reaching out to hug me.

“Nothing, stop, Mom.” But she got to me before I could push her away. Her hands on my face, her smell, maybe just because she was my mother, made me cry harder but now in her arms.

“Oh, my lovey. Tell me.” I just cried and cried.

“I have made such a mess of everything.” I finally managed to get that out, but it only made me cry harder.

“Shhhh.” I felt her hands in my hair.

“I am
such
an idiot.
I am stupid.
”

“No, no … shhh.” I was doing that thing of sucking in breath and letting it out in fits, like I was three years old.

“Is it Nolan?”

I lifted my head and nodded.

“Okay.” She took chunks of my hair and put them behind my ears. “Okay,” she said again. Her voice was soothing.

“I have to go meet him at
eleven.
” She and I both looked up at the kitchen clock. It was ten-thirty.

“You have time, where are you meeting?”

“The Met steps.” I was still trying to stop crying.

“Dad's there, you know. It's a workday for him.”

“I have to get Dad a tie. For Christmas.”

“He'll like that,” she said.

I nodded.

“Listen, Wren, you don't have to tell me what's the matter, but listen to me, okay?”

I nodded.

“You are my wonderful girl.”

I started crying again. Nothing is worse for crying than someone being nice to you.

“You are,” she said.

“I'm not so sure.”

“I am.”

I sniffed a big sniff and wiped snot on my sleeve by mistake.

“Here's the other thing,” she said.

I rubbed the snot into my shirt hoping it would go away.

“It's all going to be okay.”

 

56

It was too cold to walk
through the park so Mom gave me money for a cab. I was doing everything I could so I wouldn't cry during the ride through the transverse. Deep breathing, tugging at my sleeve, biting my lip, it worked enough so I wasn't crying, but I felt tight in my chest and like I was holding back a sneeze that was going to come out of me eventually whether I liked it or not. I didn't know what it was going to feel like to have my heart broken, but the fracture felt pretty bad already. Nolan was standing on the Met steps when the cab pulled up to the curb. There were about a million tourists and museumgoers out there with him. People on the steps have been doing the same things for as long as I can remember. They drink coffee, eat Sabrett hot dogs from the nearby carts, take pictures, talk to each other, look at their phones, think, sketch, chat, smoke. And there were swarms of them doing all that stuff, but I saw Nolan right away. He was waiting for me, so good-looking in his grandfather's overcoat, the same dark army-green scarf wrapped around his neck, jeans, and his purple high-tops. He had a big smile for me. It was so normal and friendly that for one gloriously relaxing moment I let myself think:
Charlie is wrong.

I paid the driver with the ten-dollar bill that had been folded in my hand since my mother gave it to me on our stoop and got out of the taxi. It really was freezing outside. A big wind must have come in the middle of the night and pushed the warm, soupy weather away. It felt like Christmas, but I was cold for the first time since the day of the party when I met Nolan.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” he said, and kissed me on the cheek. Every molecule in my body wanted to be wrapped up in his arms, like I had been on the subway on the night we escaped my father's party, and in the park and at his house. There wasn't an inch of me that wanted him at a distance, but that is where he stayed—at a distance.

“You want to go in?” he said cheerfully. I shook my head. “No?” I shook it again. Did he really think we were going tie shopping?

“Nolan?” I looked up at him, but my eyes squinted shut because of the sun, or because I had been crying. They felt raw, and suddenly I felt weak, so I sat down on the stone step. He sat next to me. I decided not to look at him. I could hear the rush of traffic stop when the light turned red.

“So.” I didn't know how to get the words out.

“Wren.” His voice startled me, his beautiful voice.

“Yeah.” I felt like I was going to cry again.

“I think I know what you are going to say, and I feel sick,” he said.

“What?” I looked into his face.

“I haven't been honest with you.” He said that
so slowly
and almost nobody on Earth would mistake what it meant, but I kept looking in his face hoping he wasn't going to say what I knew he was going to say.