Girls in the Moon

by Janet McNally

  Now I looked down just as a blue plus sign appeared, faint at first and then stronger, like a star that seems to brighten as the sky grows dark. I looked up at Kieran. His eyes were wide. He covered my hand with his own and squeezed, and that’s when I realized that I was holding my breath. I let it out in one quick exhale, and then I closed my eyes and opened them again. Still a plus sign, still Kieran, looking shocked. Still those tulips, red and graceful, painted in a blue vase. I heard a voice and it took me moment to realize it was Kieran’s.

  “Shit.”

  twelve

  THE FIRST TIME I MET JAMES, Luna took me to a diner near Columbia with sticky red vinyl booths and chrome-edged tables. We had eggs and toast, and he showed up when there were only crumbs and crusts left on our plates. Then he ate the crusts.

  He was tall and almost pretty, with messy chestnut-colored hair and liquid dark eyes, slim jeans and a black T-shirt. He said he had come straight from a class called “Poetics of the Warrior.”

  I crinkled a sugar packet between my fingers. “Does the class make you feel like going to war?” I asked.

  “No,” James said. “It makes me feel like having a cheese omelet.” When the waitress passed by again, he ordered one.

  I found James charming immediately. He was sweet and funny and wicked smart. He had lived in London until he was twelve and his playwright parents moved him to Manhattan, so a posh British accent hid beneath the rounder American vowels of some of his words. Sometimes it depends where he learned the word, he told me once, so things like geometry and Beyoncé sound fully from the States. Sitting in a vinyl booth at the diner, it occurred to me that I could listen to James talk all day.

  They were going to start a band, Luna told me, and James nodded enthusiastically. They’d met at a show on the Lower East Side, and she’d pressed her phone number into his hand at the end of the night. She’d written it on her ticket stub.

  “Why didn’t you just put it into his phone?” I asked.

  “Romance!” Luna said. “You want me to say, ‘Excuse me, James, may I program my number into your phone in case you need it later?’” She pantomimed typing numbers. “Are you kidding me?”

  Clearly I had no understanding of love.

  “But where did you get a pen?” I asked. She rolled her eyes and went up to the cashier to pay the check.

  James visited Buffalo while Luna was home during winter break last year and charmed my mother, too. We all stayed home on New Year’s Eve and ate a dozen different kinds of frozen appetizers baked on cookie sheets in the oven: spanakopita, tiny quiches, cherry turnovers, that kind of thing. It was exactly what we used to do when we were small, though back then we couldn’t make it until midnight and had to celebrate at six o’clock, when the celebration happened in Paris or Madrid, or seven, when it was midnight in London. There were years in the middle when we celebrated at nine or ten, when it was New Year’s somewhere over the Atlantic. Eventually we worked our way to midnight when Luna was thirteen and I was eleven. We watched movies and ate a million tiny cream puffs and passed out on the couch after the ball drop. Sometimes Tessa came over if she could escape from the party her parents gave every year, especially the years it got rowdy and loud over there.

  Last year, when James was in Buffalo with us, we started celebrating the New Year with Istanbul and Rome and Dublin and various places over the sea, blowing our noisemakers every hour on the hour. James joined right in, singing “God Save the Queen” during the London hour and making up several nonsense songs about whales and floating oceanic garbage piles for all the hours that didn’t have a city attached. Sometime near midnight I saw my mother smiling at James. It occurred to me then that Luna knew what she was doing: trying to get our mother to like him before she could hate him later, when Luna told her she was taking a leave from school.

  Outside, the air is cooler, the day’s heat starting to soften. The sun has already slipped below the row of brownstones, the slight overhang of their roofs like hats pulled down low. We walk side by side without leaving shadows on the sidewalk. I feel helium light, fizzy around my edges. I can’t wait for what’s going to happen next.

  There’s a box of books resting on a low stone wall a few buildings down, and Luna stops to riffle through them.

  “You wouldn’t believe what people throw out in this neighborhood,” she says, making a new pile of books on the wall so she can dig deeper in the box. “Pretty much our entire apartment has been furnished from the street. Which sounds gross, but the stuff is really nice.” She pulls a beat-up paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye out of the box, the same red-covered, yellow-lettered edition I read for school last summer, and puts it in her bag. “I think it’s because people move so much and no one wants to carry a lot of junk with them. Not to mention there’s no space.”

  Luna puts the rest of the books back in the box for the next customer, and we keep walking. The restaurant is down the street and over a block, and inside it’s dim and cozy, gold-lit by candles that reflect on wall hangings woven with metallic thread. The walls are painted deep red, and ochre cloths line the tables. I take a breath and realize how nervous I feel, how aware I am of my own heartbeat thudding in my chest.

  James is sitting with Josh and Archer. I’ve met those two twice, back in February and before that, in November, when the Moons were just starting out. Thinking of that first meeting now—a half hour, maybe, in a coffeehouse up near Columbia—it occurs to me just how quickly the band has found some kind of success. They released their first record, an EP called Clair de Lune, on a great indie label called Blue Sugar, and an even bigger label called Venus Moth is interested in the next one. They just want to hear it first.

  All three of the boys stand up when we get to the table.

  “What gentlemen,” I say, looking at Luna.

  “Yeah, seriously.” She pulls her chair out. “Why don’t you guys stand up when I come into a room?”

  “It happens too often,” Josh says. “You’re always coming in and walking out. You never stay still.”

  Luna rolls her eyes and sits down, just as James comes around the table to hug me.

  “The littlest Ferris,” he says, and squeezes me so hard I exhale without trying.

  “I’m not little,” I say when he lets go.

  I shake Josh’s hand and then Archer’s, which feels weird because I’ve met them already, but it goes with this whole politeness game we’re playing at here. Josh is African-American, with light brown skin and dark eyes. His fingers are so long and slender that his hands look like sculptures when they’re still (but he’s a drummer, so they hardly ever are). Archer, who’s three or four inches taller than I am, has dark brown hair that curls at the base of his neck. His eyes are seawater blue.

  I sit down between him and Josh, then unfold my napkin and put it into my lap, just for something to do.

  “How long are you staying?” Archer asks. He leans toward me a little as he says this, and I find myself doing the same thing in his direction.

  My lips feel dry suddenly, and I have to stop myself from taking my lip balm out of my purse. “Till Tuesday,” I say.

  “Eighties band!” Josh says from across the table. I look at him. He’s nodding enthusiastically. “The lead singer was Aimee Mann.”

  “Um, yeah.” I smile.

  “He’s trying to impress you with his encyclopedic musical knowledge,” Archer says.

  “Do you actually think she doesn’t know who Aimee Mann is?” Luna says to Josh. “Meg Ferris is our mother. We have both been schooled by the master.” She shakes her head and corrects herself. “Mistress.” She thinks for a moment. “Plus I think she was friends with Aimee.”

  Josh shrugs. “Okay.”

  “Anyway,” I say. “As I was saying, I have to be home for freshman orientation.”

  “Geez, I thought you were a little older than that,” Josh says. Luna laughs, one loud bark of a laugh that makes the couple at the nearest table look over at us.
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br />   “Sorry,” Luna says to them, smiling with all her perfect white teeth, and instead of looking annoyed, they smile too. Luna Ferris’s unstoppable charm strikes again.

  “She’s at least fifteen,” James says in a loud whisper. Archer is smiling from his part of the table, but he doesn’t join in.

  “Ha-ha,” I say, pronouncing it like a word instead of an actual laugh. “Is this the Luna and the Moons Comedy Show? Have you practiced for this?”

  “Every day of our lives,” Josh says, his voice dead serious. “So just how old are you, Little Ferris?”

  “You can call me Phoebe,” I say, just as Luna whispers, “Fifi,” from behind her hand.

  “Seventeen and three weeks, thank you very much. I’m not a freshman; I’m a senior orientation leader.”

  “Just like I was!” Luna says. “Adorable. Do you remember your orientation? You looked so tiny and pretty, like a doll. And now you’re all grown-up.” She pretends to cry into her napkin.

  “Yeah, I remember. You terrified all my classmates, ordering them around.” This is an exaggeration, but I want to see what Luna will say.

  “I was trying to be inspiring,” Luna says.

  “You are, babe,” says James. He looks at my sister when he says it, and manages to sound both teasing and sincere.

  “Awww,” says Luna. She leans over to kiss him.

  I turn to Archer.

  “How do you put up with them all the time?” I ask.

  “They’re not usually so bad,” he says. “We spent half the summer in a van together. We’re bored with one another. You’re new blood.”

  “We’ve been listening to Luna talk about you for weeks,” Josh says. “Months, maybe.”

  I look at Luna. “Really?”

  “I may have been a little excited about your visit,” she says.

  Sitting here with the Moons, it’s hard not to wonder what it was like for my mother and father. Did Shelter go out for Indian food and laugh like this? My mother had been friends with Carter and Dan since they were teenagers, and they got along well enough with my father to play on several of his solo records after the band broke up. The only other person who might know—besides my father—is Aunt Kit, and I’ve never asked her. I’m not really sure why. When Luna was a baby and later, after I was born, Aunt Kit went on tour with Shelter to help take care of us. Nearly four years of touring, a couple of months at a time. Luna says she remembers, in flashes: sleeping in a hotel bed, watching the highway out the window of the tour bus, listening to sound check in a neon-lit club. I don’t remember it at all.

  Once, Kit showed me some photos from the shows when we were visiting her in DC. My mother was in the shower, and Kit laid the photos, loose, out on the table in front of us. The first tour after Luna was born ended on the West Coast, and my mother looked like an afterthought in some tourist’s photos, baby Luna strapped to her chest. There was the Space Needle balancing its point up near the clouds, the jagged skyline of the city slick with rain. The ferries and the buildings and the water, all gray. In Aunt Kit’s apartment, my mother came out of the bathroom before Luna and I could do much more than glance at the photos, but now those scenes seem like more than photos to me. They seem like memories, even if I wasn’t there.

  Now, James and Luna and Josh are arguing across the table about which Beatles record is the best (Josh and James think Revolver; Luna is pulling for The White Album) and I watch them with a smile on my face. I look over at Archer.

  “Let It Be,” he says, and I’m the only one listening. “It’s sad because they’re fighting, they’re breaking up, but that’s also what makes it so great.” He smiles. “At least, that’s my pick for this week.” He looks at me. “We have this argument a lot.”

  “I can respect your choice,” I say. “I might even be convinced. ‘I’ve Got a Feeling,’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down,’ ‘Let It Be.’” He nods. I’m showing off, but I want him to know I can hold my own with a bunch of music nerds. I want him to know that Luna is right: our mom taught us well.

  “So what have you been doing all summer?” Archer asks.

  “Working at a coffeehouse, mostly.” I’m rolling my fork between my fingers and it clinks against my plate. “My mom dragged me to some galleries in the Finger Lakes. Toronto, too.” I try to call the artwork up in my mind. “There was this one artist who kept painting her feet.”

  “Feet?” Archer raises his eyebrows.

  “Yeah. She had pretty feet, I guess, but in the end, they were just feet.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this. My cheeks feel warm. “But more than anything I’ve been hanging around Buffalo making lattes.”

  “I like lattes.”

  “Lattes are fine. But you make enough of them and they stop seeming like something someone’s supposed to drink. They don’t seem real.” I look down at the tablecloth. There’s a runner in the middle, so intricately embroidered that it seems like it should be somewhere safe, where no one can spill chana masala on it. I run my finger over the stitching. “When I think about it, not much has seemed real about this whole summer.”

  Archer smiles. “I know what you mean,” he says. “Right now doesn’t feel quite real to me.” He looks at me and my pulse kicks a little faster.

  Out of the corner of my eye I can see the waiter walking toward us with a pot of chai tea and I look away, toward the waiter, toward the tea. When he puts the pot down, I’m happy to have something to do and I pour a cup even though I know it’s too hot. Somehow I stop myself from drinking it right away.

  The food is delicious, and I eat every bite of my dinner. Indian food is one of my favorites, probably because my mother started taking Luna and me to the lunch buffet at Star of India when we were tiny. There’s a photo my mother keeps in her studio of six-year-old Luna and four-year-old me posing with one of the owners in her orange silk salwar kameez. The memory gives me a quick twinge of homesickness. I wonder what my mother is doing—eating cereal alone at our kitchen table? Or going out with her friend Sandra to the Mexican place around the block?

  When we leave later the sky is a deep charcoal gray, but the streetlights are glowing so brightly that it doesn’t seem dark at all. So far, summer in this city is like being in a terrarium built for creatures who don’t need to sleep.

  We stand in a loosely formed circle on the sidewalk, and I’m not sure why. Then it becomes clear that this is some kind of band meeting.

  “The Tulip Club wants us there at eight thirty tomorrow,” James says in a serious, Official Leader voice. It sounds even more official with his British accent. Presumably he’s speaking to everyone, but he’s looking straight at Luna. She’s trying to balance perfectly still on her tiptoes, her arms at her sides like a dancer.

  “Okay.” She shrugs a little, almost imperceptibly, like she’s knocking glitter off her shoulders. “Now it’s time for the bet.”

  “What bet?” I ask. Luna smiles.

  “We have a superfan,” she says. “He’s at every show we play around here.”

  “Even Jersey,” Josh says.

  “He may murder us all someday,” Archer says, smiling.

  “No,” says Luna. “He’s sweet. Anyway”—she turns to me—“he always wears one of two shirts.”

  “Maybe he only has two shirts,” says Josh. His eyes are sparkling.

  Luna ignores him and continues. “New Order and Superchunk. So before every show we make a bet, and whoever loses has to bring breakfast to the others in the morning.” She looks at Archer. “Do you feel lucky?”

  “Ladies first,” he says. “You choose.”

  Luna closes her eyes and stands on the sidewalk, clasping her hands in front of her. She bows her head a little. We all wait.

  Her eyes snap open. “Superchunk,” she says.

  Archer nods. “Okay.” He glances at Josh. “That leaves us with New Order.”

  “Deal,” Josh says. Luna and Archer shake on it.

  “We’ll know early,” says James. “He’ll probably be th
ere waiting when our van pulls up.”

  It occurs to me then that I don’t know how big their van is, and I picture myself traveling alone on the train to the show. I could end up in Queens somehow, or way up north in Washington Heights! “Uh, guys? Will I fit in the van?”

  Luna smiles, shaking her head. “We don’t need to fit.” She curls her fingers around a lamppost and leans to the side, stretching. Her hair falls in a glossy curtain toward the ground.

  “Luna doesn’t take the van when we play in the city,” Archer says.

  Luna is still dangling sideways. “I like to have time alone before the show if I can.”

  “She doesn’t want to help unload,” Josh stage-whispers.

  “Not true!” Luna pulls herself upright. She’s trying to look indignant, but she’s smiling.

  “As long as you’re on time,” James says to Luna, “it doesn’t matter how you get there.”

  “Now that we have a guest in town,” Josh says, “we’ll have to put on a kick-ass show.”

  Archer looks at me. My heart skips and stalls.

  “We’re always kick-ass,” Luna says. She takes James’s hand and swings it back and forth. Both of them are smiling so wide they look like the “After” picture on a commercial for a dating site. Have you met your soul mate? Try RidiculouslyCuteCouples.com! You’ll be so happy, your friends and family will want to punch you, or puke!

  “‘Heartbeat,’” Josh sings in his best Buddy Holly voice, “‘why do you miss when my baby kisses me?’”

  Luna and James start to dance on the sidewalk, managing to look as if there were a choreographer standing somewhere outside of our sight, directing them. This is when Archer leans close to my ear and whispers what I didn’t even know I was waiting for him to say. He quotes part of my lyric right back to me—the one I texted him earlier in Luna’s apartment. “‘Sometimes happy is an accident,’” he says, “‘and we forget not to give up on it.’” His voice is low, and when I look around, no one else is noticing us. It’s like we’re alone.