Pack Up the Moon

by Rachael Herron

  Kate had a daughter.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Thursday, May 15, 2014

  8:30 a.m.

  Kate knocked gently on the bedroom door, and it opened quickly, as if Pree—suspiciously bright-eyed—had been waiting for her.

  “Can I make you breakfast before you go to work?”

  A guilty look flickered across Pree’s face. “I think I might play hooky today.”

  “Pancakes, then?” Hope smelled like maple syrup and butter. Kate had never wanted to make pancakes so much in her whole life.

  “Um. I’m not that hungry, really. Maybe some coffee?”

  In the kitchen, they stood in silence while the coffee hissed into its carafe. Unsure if it was a companionable silence or not, Kate worked at carefully picking out the few shards of glass still remaining at the bottom of the sink. Pree didn’t ask what she was doing.

  Kate poured Pree the first cup, and then waited until there was enough to pour for herself. Pree pushed a blue-black curl out of her eye and then stared into her coffee cup as if she were having a hard time deciding whether or not to take the first sip. She was so beautiful. Young. Gorgeous in her casually worn luminous skin. Alive. For one second Kate allowed herself to bask in this feeling of pride in a person she’d helped create. It had been a long time. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like.

  What if, on the very small chance, Pree was here because she wanted to talk? What if she wanted something from a mother she’d never had, a mother she didn’t know?

  Sternly, she reminded herself a child with two mothers doesn’t lack for maternal advice. But oh, god, if she did . . . There weren’t words in the English language to describe how she’d feel. The color didn’t exist that would paint the happiness it would bring.

  To be a mother. That’s what Pree’s mothers had had this whole time. Kate hadn’t been a mother in three years, and the urge to be one was almost overwhelming. The urge to touch Pree (to smooth the hair back off her face, to touch the tip of her perfect nose) burned in her knuckles and made her fingers twitch. It was ridiculous, not to mention socially and morally unacceptable. And still it was there, inside her, a feeling that might knock her down, physically, all the way to the ground.

  Carefully, she sat at the kitchen table. Pree sat in Robin’s place and Kate chided herself for noticing. There wasn’t a better place, after all. It was the only seat for Pree.

  After a moment, Kate said, “I want to ask you something.”

  Pree’s eyes widened.

  “An easy question, I mean.”

  “Okay,” said Pree.

  “What kind of art do you do? I mean, your medium. You didn’t really tell me.”

  Pree looked surprised. “Um. I guess right now my medium is pixels. Lots of pixels. I draw vehicles, props, environments, all for this console game we’re building. They bring me ideas—like, tell me to fill this room in a certain way, or that they need a samurai sword. I go off and research whatever it is, and then I render it for the scene.”

  “That sounds cool.” Joy thumped around Kate’s chest, lodging itself somewhere near her heart.

  “I like it.” Pree looked at the table. “I mean, it’s okay. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve sold out, you know?”

  “You’re making money by being an artist. There aren’t very many people who pull off that scam.”

  “You do.”

  It was true. Kate did. Finally. “Yeah. I worked my ass off for a really long time and I support myself now. But it wasn’t easy, and I’m not a normal case. Most people give up before I did. It was just a question of how long I could hold on. And honestly . . .” Kate paused. “My husband’s job took care of the bills. They took care of this house. It wasn’t until less than five years ago that I really started making a living wage. And if I were really honest, I’d admit I don’t even love the work I’ve been selling.”

  “Seriously?”

  “People like the dark stuff. They like bleak.” Kate looked at her fingertips, remembering when they were always stained with color. “I used to paint with every sliver of the rainbow, every tiny piece of it. Every single shade. But that’s neither here nor there, really. What?” She paused. “What’s that look?”

  “No, it’s just that . . . You’ll laugh.”

  Kate wouldn’t. No way. “I promise not to.”

  Pree appeared to be deciding something. Finally, she said, “Hang on.” She pattered up the stairs and clattered back down, this time clutching her backpack.

  “You have work here!” Kate felt like clapping her hands and sat on them to prevent herself.

  “Kinda.” Pree took out a black Moleskine that looked well used. It was battered, the corners of the cover bruised and soft-looking. “It’s probably not your thing.”

  “Try me.”

  Pree opened the book, shielding the contents with her body. Then she opened to a page and pushed it across the table toward Kate. “It’s not very good. I mean, it’s okay, but it’s . . . the kind of thing I really like to do.”

  It was a drawing of a girl, bold black lines done in thick ink. The girl wore ragged shorts and a short top with suspenders. Heavy combat boots. Dark square glasses sat on an oval face, and her mouth was open in a shout. She was muscular, with biceps and thick thighs. She was young, cocky, and Kate could almost hear the yell coming off the page. “Cerulean,” she murmured. Cerulean was the color of determination that rose from fear.

  “What?” Pree looked startled.

  “Oh. Sorry. I know it’s bizarre, some kind of weird synesthesia, but sometimes I see color in voices. If you could hear her, this girl’s voice would be—”

  “Cerulean. Yes.”

  They stared at each other.

  “Whoa,” breathed Pree.

  “Do you know—?”

  “Can you tell—?”

  They stopped.

  “You first,” said Pree.

  “What color is my voice?” Her whole life, Kate had longed to know.

  “Red.”

  Kate sat back in her chair, strangely relieved. That’s what it felt like. “Red . . .” Red for passion.

  “More like burgundy, with plum undertones. So not true red, very purply.” Pree paused. “It’s pretty. What about me?”

  “Green.” Green for strength.

  “Right on. That’s what I thought.”

  “Pale, fresh green, like the inside of a cucumber.”

  Pree pulled back the book and stared into the drawing. “I can’t believe you heard that.”

  Kate shook her head, trying to clear it. “Damn. That’s so fucking cool.”

  Laughing, Pree closed the book. “I heard about this guy who sees numbers as colors, and each color is a different emotion. The low numbers are primary colors and emotions, and the higher colors are combinations of them. He recited the numbers in pi for five hours, twenty-two thousand numbers, all in order, all correct, just because he remembered the poem he’d written in his head about the emotions of the colors.”

  “Wow. That makes me feel almost normal.”

  “Right?”

  “So, what do you do? Comics? Graphic novels? More?” Kate said.

  “All of it. I have this fantasy of doing all of it. But time, you know, there’s never enough of it. Right?”

  Kate touched the cover of the book lightly, with one finger. “What else?”

  Suddenly, Pree looked shy.

  “What is it?”

  Pree pulled something from her bag. It was something important, Kate could tell by the way her shoulders rounded protectively.

  “Stickers.”

  Thick black lines curled over the blue-and-white sticker, which looked like it might have once been some kind of label. “RARE. Nice slap.”

  Pree gaped. “You know street art?”

  “Graf’s cool. I’ve never done any, but I love it. I studied it for a while, looking specifically at their shading. There’s some great grayscale stuff. Have you seen the warehouse over on Mande
la Parkway? A big group of women got together and bombed it a while ago.”

  “I read about that.”

  “I’ve been there. I’ll take you sometime. If you want to.” Too much, slow down. Kate added another spoon of sugar to her cup, even though it was sweet enough already. “You sure you don’t want some toast?”

  “I’m okay. I, um, woke up early and stole some of your cereal.”

  “I had cereal?”

  “Two kinds. I had the Cocoa Puffs.”

  Shit. Kate had left those in the cupboard, next to her own Cheerios. It had been a small concession, just a tiny one. She knew she’d throw them out at some point—she just hadn’t gotten around to it just yet. The pain knifed her gut, as sudden and unexpected as always. She breathed. In. Out. Hold on.

  “Must have been kind of stale,” she managed.

  “They were kind of chewy.”

  Kate stood, willing her knees to stay steady. “I’m going to have toast, then. Let me know if I can get you anything.”

  “So . . .”

  “Mmm?” Maybe if she didn’t look at her . . .

  Pree cleared her throat, a soft noise. Then she said, “What did your mother say to you? When you were pregnant with me?”

  “Not much, actually.”

  “She didn’t know?”

  “Oh, she knew. I think she knew before I even told her somehow. She just never had much to say to me even on a good day.”

  “Is she alive?”

  “No, she died last year.” At Pree’s stricken expression, Kate realized she should have softened the blow, but she hadn’t seen it coming.

  “Oh. You weren’t close at all?”

  Was that yearning in Pree’s voice? Kate said, “No. Not the way I wanted to be.”

  “You were alone at the hospital. My moms said that, anyway.”

  So alone. Kate sucked in a breath and nodded. “She tried, but she was in a dark place then. And she wanted me to keep the baby, as crazy as that was, as young as I was. She thought, if I kept you . . . Anyway. She gave me a hand-knit sweater afterward. A gorgeous, cabled Aran wool sweater. She must have been working on it when I was pregnant, hiding it in her bedroom. I guess . . . it told me she didn’t wish me dead or anything. But still. We never talked about it after.” About the baby. About Pree. That had been the worst part of all, actually. Worse than giving birth naturally, worse than signing the papers in the hospital. Kate had at least known Marta and Isi would love the baby. Even as young and naive as she’d been in everything else, she’d known that. But Kate had just wanted to go home, to her mother. She wanted Sonia’s arms around her. She wanted to be able to cry for days if she needed to, and she wanted her own mother to take care of her. Not just a sweater.

  Pree blinked. “Sad. What about your dad?”

  “Died when I was young.”

  Pree propped her elbow on the table and her chin on her knuckles. “What do you remember?”

  Kate held the bread in her hand and considered the question. “His hands smelled like motor oil, even when he wasn’t working, but his jackets smelled like the cinnamon rolls he made on Sundays. He was loud, but only accidentally. He was ex–air force, and he flew helicopters, mostly commercial. On the weekends, he contracted for the parks department, flying paramedics. It was his favorite thing in the world, flying in and scooping up someone from a hillside who’d fallen or had a heart attack while hiking. He didn’t hear that well from the rotor noise, and to compensate, he yelled all the time.” Kate hadn’t thought of him, not like this, in years. She missed him suddenly, something she’d thought she was over.

  “What did he look like?”

  “That’s another good question.” Kate couldn’t really remember. She could visualize the photos she had of him, but the man himself—his image had slipped away over the years, no matter how hard she’d tried to hold on. It was why, in her last series, she’d painted only pieces of his helicopter, the sky, the ocean he loved, a jutting spit of beach. Pictures of her father. “Big. As tall as his voice was loud, and wide as a redwood.”

  “But you were small then.” Pree kept her chin resting on her hand.

  It was true, in the photos of him with Sonia, he didn’t seem that much bigger than his wife. “Yeah. Maybe I just remember him that way.”

  Pree wriggled so that the chair creaked, a noise Kate hadn’t heard in such a long time. “So he never got to see what you became.”

  A mother with no child. A wife with no husband. “No. He would have thought being an artist was silly, probably. Military to the core.” Kate pushed the bread down into the toaster. Damn fancy olive loaf from the farmers market, it would probably burn in there. “First-world problems,” she muttered. “So. Tell me more about that Flynn you mentioned when we met. He’s an artist, too, right?”

  Pree shifted in her seat, her knee thumping the underside of the table. Instead of answering, she said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t stop thinking about it. What was my father like?”

  Kate stilled her face, making sure her lips didn’t give her away. Loving. Kind. Sexy. Sweet. My best friend. “I told you, he was nice.”

  “Nice?” She smiled winningly, and Kate saw her own crescent moon crinkly eyes in Pree’s face. “Can’t you give me just a little more?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “You must remember something. Do I look like him?”

  Pree’s question jolted her back to the present, and she almost answered truthfully. So much so that it hurts me to look at you. But she said instead, also truthfully, “You look like Robin.”

  Kate could almost see the war within Pree, the tension scribbled across her face. She wanted more about her father so desperately. What must she think? Had she bought the Greg Jenkins lie? What came up when you did google his name? Kate should have done that already, should be ready to back up the stupid, ridiculous, necessary lie.

  Pree glanced down at her lap, and when she looked up, her eyes were less intense. “Well, then, what was Robin like?”

  Kate softened inside. This was the only question that was safe to answer. “When he was born he weighed eight pounds, two ounces. His eyes were blue except when he cried—then they were bright green. The first movie he ever watched was Star Wars, because Nolan wanted to start him out right. He could read at age three, and he loved Harry Potter more than he loved ice cream. I never finished reading him the last book because there was too much death in it, and I regret that every day. He had scars on his back from the spinal taps and I worried that they would never go away, that he’d still have the reminder of his pain when he was grown. Then I’d wonder if he would grow up, and I’d pray for more scars, anything to buy him more time. When he went into a giggle fit, he sounded like a baby seal barking, something he knew, and on his birthday every year, he asked to go see the seals at Fisherman’s Wharf so he could show them what a good barker he was. He was perfect.”

  “He was?” Pree’s voice had a wistful tone and Kate regretted her word choice.

  “Of course not. He wasn’t perfect at all. He farted in front of my mother on purpose and he snuck lizards he caught outside and put them into the basket where I kept coffee filters just so I’d freak out. Once he told me my ass was fat in front of his first-grade teacher. And yes, he used the word ‘ass.’ But no matter what, he was perfect.” Kate smiled. “You two have that in common.”

  Pree snorted, but Kate saw delight in her eyes, and something similar danced within her.

  “What else?” asked Pree. “What was his favorite color?”

  “He said red but he always reached for anything green. He loved green clothes, green crayons, green paint . . . I think he only said red because of the Gryffindor colors.”

  “That’s why you painted his room Harry Potter.”

  “He was the biggest fan ever.” Even now, the past tense was still so fucking difficult to use.

  “Where is he now?”

  Kate’s brain stalled, then nosedived toward the ground, the blade
s whirring and cracking. “In Mountain View Cemetery, around the corner. Or half of him, anyway. I kept some ashes to bury at sea.”

  Pree frowned. “So part of him . . .”

  “Is on the mantel with my mother.” Should she tell Pree the rest? Might as well, now that she’d crashed and was lying in the wreckage. “I’m going to toss both of them off a boat on Saturday, actually. I’ve had it scheduled for a long time.” She didn’t mention she’d been considering canceling it as she had the other times. If ever it was time, it was now. Now that she had this slender hope to perch on. She would do it. That was, if she could let her boy go, the biggest if of all. “Robin and my mother loved to swim together.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.” Kate paused, taking inventory. She would live. Probably. “I want to show you his favorite place. Will you go somewhere with me? If you’re really playing hooky?”

  Pree nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Good,” Kate said. It was so good.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Thursday, May 15, 2014

  9:30 a.m.

  Kate’s car remembered all the turns. It remembered the entrance onto the bridge and it exited at Octavia as if it had gone there just last week instead of years ago. Pree was quiet—not a bad quiet, but still Kate worried. Did she want out of the car? Did she regret saying she’d go someplace an hour away with a person she barely knew? Pree played with a thick pen, rolling it in her fingers, and Kate recognized the motion—she did it herself when she was thinking, only she liked holding her favorite Winsor & Newton brush and rubbing her thumb over the broken end (she’d sat on it once on the couch in her studio and refused to get rid of it).

  They drove through town in heavy traffic, weaving through the park, then slicing down Lincoln through the Avenues. They were in Pree’s city, but she didn’t say anything about her place or her boyfriend.

  “You don’t need anything from home since we’re so close?” Kate would have given her left eyebrow to see where Pree lived.

  Pree kept her eyes out the window and tapped on the door handle. Tap tap tap. “Nah. Thanks for the loan of the clothes.”