Pack Up the Moon

by Rachael Herron

  The Internet told all. It was inevitable. Kate should have known, should have tried to beat the world to the punch and told her herself as soon as they’d met. But she hadn’t. “You did.”

  “Did we have the same father? I read you married your high school sweetheart, so . . .”

  This was the time to tell her. Yes, Nolan is your father . . . A spot under her ribs felt compressed, as if a fist were squeezing her heart, pushing words into her lungs and then out. If she told Pree, she’d have to admit the whole truth to Nolan, too, that she’d had his child. While she and Nolan had been apart during the college years, she’d never felt guilty about not telling him, not tracking him down. He was the one who’d left. He didn’t deserve to know she’d given away a baby.

  But when he’d come back into her life . . . As it was, she hoped she could just tell Nolan she’d had a child while they were apart. Not his child. Just a random one (as if there was such a thing). Then she could work up to the rest of the truth. She could take her time, make it right. She had to keep the plates spinning for a little longer, that was all. Black spots danced at the edges of her peripheral vision, a darkness made of fear. “No. Different fathers.” The lie burned in her chest, pulsed with heat. She only said it to give herself some more time to think, and even as she spoke, she had to keep herself from reaching forward to snatch the words back to herself. The phrase broke into shards, more dangerous than simple broken glass.

  Pree blinked. “So he was my half brother.”

  “Yes.” Wrong, wrong, wrong . . .

  “And his father . . . killed him?”

  The word was so sharp. It was appropriate, but it cut Kate. “I’m sure you read all about it. It’s all out there.”

  “But it’s not the same as hearing it from . . .” Pree trailed off on the last word.

  “From your biological mother.”

  Pree rocked back and forth inside her thick black boots, as if the energy inside her couldn’t be contained. “I hate it when people say that. Biological. As if that’s all there is to it.”

  “But—”

  “You’re my biological mother. What that makes it sound like is that you made a baby and gave it away, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Some people would say that’s true.”

  “But it’s bullshit!” Pree’s voice broke, just as Robin’s always had when he was angry. “You gave me your DNA. Your body is encoded in mine. We share genes. I think the way you do. I act the way you do, in ways we don’t even know about. We’re both artists, and I didn’t even know that about you. I share the same with my father, whoever he is. Yeah, it’s biological, but it’s so much more than that, and I would have really, really liked to know my brother.” The clear green in Pree’s voice shimmered, like heat waves over asphalt.

  “I would have liked that, too. I wish you had.”

  Pree tilted her head and looked at Kate.

  I don’t get to make wishes. “I’m sorry.”

  “Who is my father?”

  Fear would burn its way through her, leaving only a dried-out husk. Old lies. New ones. “Greg Jenkins.” Greg was the boy she’d been dating at Cal when Nolan transferred in. When Nolan found her. And with a name like that—there had to be a million Greg Jenkinses in the world, if and when Pree googled him . . .

  “Who’s he?”

  Greg had meant exactly nothing to her. They ate pizza together and saw movies a couple of times. There was a brew pub incident that remained thankfully hazy in Kate’s memory, though she thought it had been the culmination of too many garlic fries followed by a clove cigarette after one too many beers. Greg had liked her very much, and Kate had planned to like him more, and when Nolan came back she completely forgot about that intention. Greg meant more to her in this moment, saying his name to Pree, than he ever had before. “He was sweet. Pretty blue eyes like a girl.” This was true.

  Pree touched her eyelashes. “Where is he now?”

  Kate shrugged, her heart racing as she realized she would have to say more. Somehow, she’d thought for a second that the name would be enough. “I don’t know.” This was also true.

  “What does he do?”

  He’d friended her on Facebook two years before. Robin was dead then, and Nolan was in jail—she’d ignored the request, just as she’d shut everyone else out, and now she regretted that choice. “I have no idea.”

  “Do you know his birthday? I need to find him. Obviously.”

  Find him? She and Greg had had sex only twice (Greg eager, Kate surprised at her own ambivalence). If she found him, he wouldn’t believe he had a daughter. Nor should he. It was untrue. And even while she knew she had to fix everything she’d broken and confess, Kate couldn’t make her mouth shape the words. Instead, leaning into the fear and hoping to find the right words, the solution, she said, “You can’t. I never told him.”

  “You never told my father you were pregnant with me?”

  Also true, heartbreakingly true. Maybe truth could be snuck up on, rounded up in the back of the house under the washing machine, clubbed on the head and dragged to the living room later when she felt stronger. Kate shook her head.

  “And you don’t know how to get hold of him?”

  Another shake of her head.

  Pree bit her bottom lip, which was suddenly quivering. “That’s okay. I have mad Google-fu.”

  It was such a lightweight statement for the despair in her eyes. “I’m sorry. Maybe we can work on it together.” Never.

  Then Pree was crying, swiping angrily at her eyes with her fingers. Eyeliner ran down her right cheek, and Kate felt relief flood her chest. Tears she understood. Tears she knew. Kate stood and gathered Pree to her. Her daughter was bony, all protuberances and sharp points.

  Kate’s arms rose around her, and she felt the knobs at Pree’s shoulders.

  Where her wings would be.

  Pree’s tears soaked through Kate’s thin T-shirt at her neck, and still she cried. For long minutes they stood there together. Five, maybe six. Then, when the tears dried and Pree started sniffling, moving her feet in an embarrassed postcry shuffle. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where all that came from.”

  Kate made a flapping gesture. “Are you kidding? Some days it’s all I do.”

  Hic. “This is going to sound weird . . .”

  “Tell me.”

  “No, it’s a question,” said Pree.

  Kate’s heart fluttered. “Okay.”

  “Can I take a shower here?”

  Surprise felt like joy. “Yes! Of course.”

  “I just, I mean . . . I just want to wash off the day.” Pree blinked and wiped smudged mascara off the back of her hand.

  Then Kate asked what she’d longed to ask for so long, even before she’d met the person she’d ask it of. “Do you want to stay? I have ice cream for dessert and a spare room.”

  Wednesday, May 14, 2014

  11 p.m.

  • • •

  Kate’s bedroom was next to Robin’s—no, Pree’s—room. She’d spent so long untraining her listening ear that it was difficult to hear if Pree was moving around. Was she asleep? Did she like the Harry Potter walls, really? Or had that just been something she said (who wouldn’t exclaim in surprise at being confronted with a towering painted Hogwarts)? Was she comfortable? Was the bed too small? Too soft?

  Kate lay still, willing her breath to be silent. Over the beating shump-shump of her heart, she felt a splinter of unexpected pain as she thought she heard a floorboard creak, the same board that had always given Robin away as he crept out to peek in on his parents. But no noise followed that one, and Kate’s heart slowly calmed.

  Since Robin died, no one but Kate had ever spent the night in their home (first Nolan had been in the hospital, then in a hotel, then in prison). No, that wasn’t true. Her friend Dierdre had stayed one night. She’d come over three days after Robin’s death. She’d planted herself in the red armchair in the living room and said, “I’m not going anywher
e.”

  “I can’t,” started Kate, exhausted by the thought of making her friend comfortable.

  “I’m not here to talk to you, to feed you, or to do anything but be in this room.” Dierdre picked up a magazine (Parents, Kate noted dully) and flipped the pages. “Nothing you say can make me leave. I love you. Now go do your thing and feel free to ignore me. I’ll just be here.”

  Kate had ignored her as long as she could, and then late that night, she’d found herself lying on the couch with her head in Dierdre’s lap. Her friend had stroked her hair and cried with her and had then put her to bed, holding her hand until she slept. Kate sent her home kindly in the morning. She was grateful to Dierdre but not willing to indulge herself again with that kind of comfort.

  Kate’s mother, Sonia, was almost as brokenhearted as Kate was. Robin had repaired some of the broken pieces in his grandmother (they’d shared that love of the water—their sealskin, Kate called it) but when he died, the work came undone. Sonia did her best, Kate knew that. She dropped by with food, simple, bland things that could slip down without burning Kate’s tear-locked throat. She sat next to her in the trial, and never once said a cruel word about Nolan, even though Kate could see the words simmering on her lips. And Sonia had never spent the night, had never tried to. She knew better, understood more about grief. When Sonia had died two years after Robin, Kate had been astonished at how the shades of pain were similar when she closed her eyes—Robin, her mother—deep, bruised blues marred by cadmium trails that flared angry green where they met.

  Now Kate took a deep breath and rolled onto her back. She looked up at the blank ceiling, tracing the crack that ran from the wall to the ceiling fan with her eyes.

  Not even the accountant Kate had dated for three months earlier in the year had ever been allowed to stay the night. She’d met him in line at the library, a safe enough place, she supposed, to meet someone. At least he read. She’d slept at his place twice, long, uncomfortable nights during which she missed the breath, the air of her own home. Esau’s place had smelled like new leather shoes and roasted garlic, and he liked the windows closed at night for safety—Kate had felt, each night, as if someone were holding a towel over her mouth. She’d hated rebreathing the warm, stuffy, used-up air.

  Esau had been sweet, though. He’d been exactly what Kate had thought she’d needed: a quiet distraction, some physical companionship. She liked his strong, broad arms (so different from Nolan’s rather thin ones), and he always brought her gerbera daisies—her favorite flower. She loved them for their showy hardiness. Their sloppy messiness. They reminded her of herself, the way she used to be when she could still handle big things, before her bones had taken on this unbearable breakable feeling.

  It had been another thing to like about Esau, that he thought of her as strong. He said she was resilient and that he knew she could handle anything. He admired her for it, and said it to her in the night, the time she needed it most. Kate used to like Nolan’s dirty words whispered in her ear, but when she was dating Esau, she craved his phrasing: “You’re strong as a bull, as strong as steel.” When he said she was like a fortress, she actually got wet.

  Once, as he moved against her and in her, Kate had wished for one horrible moment that the condom would break. She was only thirty-seven; it wasn’t like her time had run all the way out. He would never know because she wouldn’t tell him. She pushed away the forbidden thought and considered whispering to him to go faster, harder, but she didn’t whisper things like that to him. She never said much of anything when they made love. She didn’t need to. Esau was attentive, and smart. He knew what to do to make her come. Esau was reliable.

  The same night of her shameful condom wish, Kate had felt something build in her chest. She’d cleared her throat, trying to get rid of it, and then, with Esau’s arms firmly around her, on the solidity of his chest, the thing that was building finally broke and tears came, fast and violent. In surprise Esau said, “Hey, now,” but there was a pale yellow undertone to his voice that Kate recognized—he had been as happy to have her crying on him as she was horrified. This wasn’t what Esau was for, but it was what he wanted to be. “Hey, now, you. I’ve got you, Katie.”

  No one had ever called her that but Nolan, and she hated Esau for it, pushing her face farther into his neck and letting the tears soak the edge of his pillow.

  “I’m sorry,” she said what felt like but probably wasn’t hours later.

  “For what? Crying? It’s good for what ails you. Talk to me.”

  Kate snuffled and reached behind her for a Kleenex, not caring that she sounded like an elephant, knowing that she had to find the right words to make him leave that night. She wished he were the kind of person with whom she could just have a good, massive, no-holds-barred screaming match that ended in broken china, kisses, and the absolute knowledge of the strength of flawed but true love.

  The last time she’d seen Esau, he’d said earnestly (with a sheen of tears in his eyes that Kate wished she could also summon, if only to make him feel better) that he wanted her to find happiness again someday.

  (Happiness had been Robin’s sweaty fingers twisted into her hair while she read Harry Potter to him. Happiness had been Nolan’s long legs sleep-heavy, her own feet asleep under his in their shared bed under the wide-open window.)

  Now she consciously relaxed her ears, which had been pulled back as if she’d been about to smile, or grimace. She couldn’t hear Pree, nothing at all. The girl was probably asleep as she herself should be.

  She continued to stare at the ceiling. She’d painted all the other ceilings in the house—why not this one? Nolan had always said they should put up those silly glow-in-the-dark stars like they’d put in Robin’s room. Nolan loved those damn things. They would pretend they were making love outdoors. He’d have brought her a night picnic in bed. She knew he would have.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Marriage

  October 1996

  When Kate saw Nolan for the first time four years after their breakup, she was wearing a pale pink dress that looked like the inside of an oyster’s shell. She was the pearl inside, naked and exposed. It was nothing she would have ever chosen to wear, all plunging neckline and taffeta flaring at the knee, but the host of the Halloween party, Josie, had insisted that all the women wear thrifted bridesmaids’ dresses.

  At twenty, Kate was in her junior year at Berkeley, finally feeling as if she might make it. She’d almost flunked out in her first year, going on academic probation twice. She’d spent way more time drinking than painting or studying, and she’d tried coke more than a few times, liking it so intensely it frightened her. She’d slept with too many men—boys, really—so many she didn’t remember some of their faces.

  She’d been on the edge of failing at everything that mattered, but one morning she opened her eyes at three a.m., fully awake, her roommate snoring on the other bed.

  It was her daughter’s third birthday. Somewhere, a child might be laughing, a child who didn’t know her at all.

  What if, someday, that child wanted to find her?

  It would never happen, she told herself firmly, believing it.

  Kate made it to class on time that morning for the first time all semester.

  Now she had her own apartment, a small, damp, extremely cheap cottage in Oakland pressed against the side of a hill, and Sonia had given her an old VW Bug that ran most days. She went to most of her classes (except economics) and never missed Painting 307 (emphasis on abstract portraiture—she was in the middle of painting herself as a wooden chair). Greg Jenkins probably thought she was his girlfriend.

  At Josie’s party, Nolan stood across the room from Kate, better-looking than ever, finally grown into his breadth. He wore a deep purple shiny suit with a pearl-colored bow tie.

  How . . . ? Shit, it didn’t matter how. He was there. Ten feet away. Less. She felt as vulnerable as she’d been that day she’d hung up on him for the last time. She was as brokenhearted
as when she’d kissed their baby girl good-bye. And she was about a million years older.

  B is for baby.

  Careful not to look directly at him, Kate kept her eyes on the back of Don’s head as he primed the keg.

  Then Josie turned up the music as “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something came on. Heads bobbed, and people Kate barely knew started to dance. One guy wearing a pink ruffled tux danced as if he were fighting off a swarm of bees, and a girl rushed out onto the porch to vomit in the bushes.

  The singer sang, I think I remember the film.

  Kate tried so hard, so very, very hard not to look at Nolan. She tried until she gave up. And there, in that moment, it all came back. All of it. In his face she saw the long nights spent laughing until their stomachs hurt, late afternoons spent watching golden light slip into sunset on the beach, fingers threaded, limbs light with hope. His gaze said the words to her, the same words she didn’t even know she’d been missing.

  As I recall, I think we both kind of liked it.

  Kate’s heart flew up toward the skylight open to the moon.

  Nolan didn’t break eye contact. His gaze was the apology. The profession.

  Kate’s fingers started to shake.

  Josie and Don yelled something about the tap on the keg.

  Neither Kate nor Nolan even spared them a glance. Inside her chest, a million wishes thrummed and soared, frantic hummingbirds of hope.

  And then in front of dozens of people who weren’t paying any attention to either of them, Nolan crossed the room with long strides. He took her face in both his hands—Nolan’s hands!—and kissed her. The red cup of warm beer Kate held splashed into her dyed pink pumps, and she went up on tiptoe, kissing him back. Half her heart rejoiced, soaring to the skylight above, and out to the moonlight. She kept the other half carefully swaddled away, protected by canvas and plywood. Nothing is this easy, she warned herself, but then the feel of his mouth, so perfect, so missed, pushed everything out of the way.

  • • •

  By the time the song—and that kiss, that perfect kiss— was over, Kate’s powers of critical thinking had come back. This was the man who’d broken her heart when he was a boy.