Keeping the Moon (22 page)

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I walked in to the back room and saw Mira sitting at her drafting table, with Isabel on the couch beside her. They were both drinking iced tea with somber looks on their faces. Through the window facing the little house I could hear music. Sad music.

"Her heart is broken," Mira said, sticking her pen in her hair. "You're just going to have to ride it out."

"But I should be there. I've always been there when she was upset like this. I just don't get why this is suddenly all my fault." Isabel looked terrible; her hair was in a sloppy ponytail and she was wearing jeans, a torn red T-shirt, and no makeup whatsoever. She saw me looking and snapped, "I thought I was only going out for a second."

"Fine," I said. I was not going to get on her bad side today.

"She has to blame someone," Mira explained.

"Then blame Mark!" Isabel slammed down her tea glass. "He's the one who cheated on her, married someone else and got her pregnant. All I ever did was--"

"Tell her he was no good. That he was lying to her. That she was going to get hurt," Mira filled in. She shook her head ruefully. "Don't you see, Isabel? She's embarrassed. She's humiliated. And when she looks at you, she knows you were right all along."

"But I didn't want to be right," Isabel protested. "I just didn't want her to get hurt."

"But she did," Mira said. "And until she gets over the shock and comes to her senses and gets
angry,
you just have to keep your distance. The timing is bad too, with the eclipse and all. Everything's out of whack."

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Isabel rolled her eyes. "But it's my house, too," she grumbled. "I can't even get to my clothes."

"Give her time," Mira said, looking down at the drafting table. "Or better yet," she said brightly, "give her a card."

"A what?"

"A card!" Mira said, gesturing grandly to the boxes behind her. "There are thousands of ways right here to console her on a loss. Just pick one."

"He's not dead, Mira," I said.

"He should be," Isabel said darkly.

"Go ahead," Mira said cheerfully. "Take one. Take several."

Isabel walked to the shelf and pulled down a box. Mira bounced in her chair, smiling at me.

"So," she said. "Ready for that big date?" I'd told her about it that morning, during our cereal session.

"I guess," I said, and she smiled at me.

Isabel opened up a card and read aloud. "'I am so sorry to hear of your terrible loss ... but I know that time, and love, will heal all wounds and that your little friend will live on in your heart forever.' " She looked at Mira, eyebrows raised.

"Dead hamster," Mira explained. "Try another one."

"Okay," Isabel said, opening a second card. "How about... 'There comes a time when we all must accept the loss of someone who may not have been truly real but was very real in our hearts. I know this loss affects you in a way some might not understand. But as your friend, I do. And I am so sorry' "

"Dead soap opera character," Mira said. "That's not right either." She got up and went over to the boxes, rifling through

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them. "Let's see. How about a dead ex-husband? Or a dead former flame?"

"These are all too nice," Isabel said. "What we need is a good, nasty, empowering card. But nobody makes those."

Mira turned around, took a pen out of her hair, and then jabbed it back in another spot. She was thinking.
"We
could," she said suddenly. "Of course. We'll make a card. How stupid of me!" She went back to her chair, jacked it up, and pulled out a blank piece of sketch paper, folding it in half. "Okay," she said, licking the tip of her pen. "What should it say?" She looked at Isabel.

Isabel looked at me.

"The truth," I said. "It should say the truth."

"Truth," Mira agreed. "So maybe, the front should say something like ... 'I am sorry for your broken heart.' "

"Perfect," Isabel said.

Mira bent over the card, writing with smooth strokes. Underneath, she drew a heart with a jagged line down the middle. "Okay," she said when she was through. "Now we need the inside. This is the hardest part."

We considered this. Cat Norman walked through, looked at the three of us, and sat down with a wheeze.

" 'I am sorry for your broken heart..." Mira read off the front. "but..."

"But," Isabel said, " 'he was a rotten, cheating rat bastard and you deserve better.' "

"Bingo!" Mira said, whipping another pen out of her hair. "Perfect. And ..."

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"And," I said, '"As your friend, I want you to know that I love you and I know you can get through this.' "

"Excellent." Mira was scribbling madly. "Wonderful. You know, I like this concept--revenge cards. Straight and to the point."

"You should start a new line," I told her as she finished it up with a flourish, then turned it over to sign her name on the back. "Give it a snappy name. Leave the death business and take up empowerment."

Mira looked up. "You're right." She thought for a second. "I know!" she said excitedly, pointing her pen at me. "Heartbreak Diet. That's what I'd call it. I'd make millions."

"You would," I said, smiling at her. "There's even more heartbreak out there than dead people, I bet."

"Okay then," Isabel said, walking over and signing the card in red felt-tip marker before tucking it under her arm. "Wish me luck. I hope this helps."

"Good luck," Mira said.

"Good luck," I said. "Are we still on for later?"

"Later?" Isabel said.

"You said you'd help me get ready," I told her. "For my date."

"Oh, sure," she said. "Just come over in a little while. Give me some time to work this out. Okay?"

"Okay," I said. And I crossed my fingers for both of them as she walked through the yard toward home.

Around eight o'clock, when it was just beginning to get dark, Norman pulled in to the driveway. I stood at my window and

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watched him unload some groceries; there was celery poking out of one bag. He went around the side of the house, his sunglasses perched on his head, toward his apartment. But just as he turned the corner he looked up at me.

I stepped back. I'd already changed my outfit twice, and finally decided to carry an optional shirt so Isabel could make the final decision.

Mira was parked in front of the television, eating carrot sticks and settling in for an evening of pay-per-view Cage Fighting before the eclipse. She was painting her toenails.

"I'll see you at twelve-fifteen," I told her as I stood behind her chair, watching a wrestler I didn't recognize pull the Lasso Brothers off the sides of the cage by their legs.

She turned around and smiled. "Okay," she said. "Meet me out front."

I picked up my shirt and walked next door, stopping at the hedge when I saw Isabel sitting on the porch, still in the same outfit. She had a beer in her hand.

"The card didn't work?" I said.

She shook her head. "I don't know what to do," she said, running her finger around the mouth of the bottle. "I mean, I've never seen her like this."

"She'll be okay," I said.

"I don't know." The house was lit up and empty. I wondered if Morgan had even come out of the bedroom. "Frank's supposed to be picking me up for a party in fifteen minutes and I don't even think I can leave her."

"Well," I said, holding up my shirt, "you can at least help me get ready. Which one?"

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She glanced up. "I don't know, Colie."

"Come on, Isabel."

She put down her beer. "I can't help you, okay? Not tonight. This is--this is just too much."

"But you promised."

"Well," she said, shaking her head, "I'm sorry."

I just stood there. Behind Mira's house I could see the light spilling out from Norman's room. "I can't do it without you," I said. "You know how to do the makeup and my hair, and everything. If it wasn't for you--"

"No," she said. Her voice was tired. "That's not true."

"What am I going to do?" I asked her. "I can't just go like this."

"Of course you can," she said. "You're beautiful, Colie."

"Stop it," I said. She sounded like my mother through all those Fat Years:
You're beautiful. You have such a pretty face.

"You don't need me." She stood up. "You never did. I didn't do anything but dye your hair and smear on a bunch of makeup. What you were that night at the beach was just
you,
Colie. It was all you. Because for once, you believed in yourself. You believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world."

The rest of the world.
"No," I said.

"It's true." And she smiled, a sort of sad half smile. "It's like the hidden secret that no one tells you. We can all be beautiful girls, Colie. It's so easy. It's like Dorothy clicking her heels to go home. You could do it all along."

Inside the house I heard a door open, then shut. There was a flash of something that had to be Morgan.

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Isabel turned around. She'd seen it too. "Go on," she said. "Have fun, Colie. A first date is a big thing. Enjoy it."

"But--" I said. There was so much I wanted to say, to ask her. Frank was already pulling up, even as Isabel walked to the door and knocked on it again.

"Morgan," she said. She sounded so tired. "Please let me in."

I backed off the porch as Frank got out of the car. And then I slipped back to Mira's and up to my room, to get myself ready for my date and the moon.

Norman was waiting for me with candles lit, a funky quilt spread across the floor, and soft music--the Dead, naturally-- playing in the background.

"I've been slaving over this," he said. "I hope you're hungry."

"I am," I said. I'd decided on the first shirt I'd chosen and very little makeup, pulling my hair back the way it had been at the fireworks. I left my lip ring in and told myself to stand up straight, shoulders back. I wanted to believe Isabel, but I had my doubts.

"You look great," Norman said. "Here. Have an appetizer." For the menu, he had made what he called Moon Food, in honor of the eclipse.

We had small cheese quiches to start. "So you have your cow, the dish and the spoon," he said. Then salad, with blue cheese dressing--which as kids, we all knew came from the moon-- and fresh fish from the river on the sound side, the Moonakis (a stretch, he said, but he'd run out of ideas). And finally, Moon Pies for dessert.

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"You," I said, pointing the last bit of my Moon Pie at him, "can do wonders with a hot plate."

"It's a gift," he explained. He was on his second Moon Pie-- his favorite food, I'd learned.

"I bet," I said. I looked around the room. During all those hours of sitting I had memorized the portraits, the mobiles, the mannequins, everything: I knew them all by heart. The only thing new was in a far corner, covered with a sheet, leaning against the wall.

"You know," I said, "all this time I've been wondering about that painting."

"Which one?"

I pointed to the far wall, where the man was leaning against the car, still laughing. "That one. Is it your dad?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"He posed for you?"

"No." He ripped open the plastic of another Moon Pie. "I did it from a photograph. It was taken the day he opened his first dealership, the one by the bridge. See that car there? It was the first one he sold."

"Wow," I said, looking at it more closely "It's really well done, Norman. He must have liked it."

"I don't know," he said quietly. "He's never seen it." He paused. "I didn't want to show it to him, because I knew how he felt about my work. But I've always loved that picture, you know? There's something so cool about capturing a person at a time when they're really just, like, the best they can be. Or have been."

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I thought about this, taking in his dad's broad smile.

"That's why I keep it there," he added, brushing crumbs off his lap. "It's the way I want to think of him."

We sat there, not talking, for a few minutes. He ate the Moon Pie; only skinny people can scarf down junk food like that. Finally, I said, "Norman?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you
ever
going to show me the painting?"

"Man," he said. "You are, like,
so
impatient."

"I am not," I said. "I've been waiting forever."

"Okay, okay." He stood up and went over to the corner, picking up the painting and bringing it over to rest against the bright pink belly of one of the mannequins. Then, he handed me a bandana. "Tie that on."

"Why?" I said, but I did it anyway. "Norman, you are way too into ceremony."

"It's important." I could hear him moving around, adjusting things, before he came to sit beside me. "Okay," he said. "Take a look."

I pulled off the blindfold. Beside me, Norman watched me see myself for the first time.

And it
was
me. At least, it was a girl who looked like me. She was sitting on the back stoop of the restaurant, legs crossed and dangling down. She had her head slightly tilted, as if she had just been asked something and was waiting for the right moment to respond, smiling slightly behind the sunglasses that were perched on her nose, barely reflecting part of a blue sky.

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The girl was something else, though. Something I hadn't expected. She was beautiful.

Not in the cookie-cutter way of all the faces encircling Isabel's mirror. And not in the easy, almost effortless style of a girl like Caroline Dawes. This girl who stared back at me, with her lip ring and her half smile--not quite earned--knew she wasn't like the others. She knew the secret. And she'd clicked her heels three times to find her way home.

"Oh, my God," I said to Norman, reaching forward to touch the painting, which still didn't seem real. My own face, bumpy and textured beneath my fingers, stared back at me. "Is this how you see me?"

"Colie." He was right beside me. "That's how you are."

I turned to look at him, studying his face the way, for all those weeks, he had studied mine. I wanted to remember it, not just in this moment, but from the whole summer into forever.