“Thanks,” she says.
“I have the same job as you,” I say. “Back home.”
There’s no one behind me in line, so I lean against the counter and wait for my drink.
“Where’s home?” the girl behind the counter asks.
When I open my mouth to answer, I’ve already decided that I want to be someone else today.
“DC,” I say.
“Even hotter than here, right?” she says. The girls I followed in get their drinks in to-go cups and leave through the glass door.
Aunt Kit lives there, so I’ve spent plenty of summer weeks wandering from air-conditioned museum to museum. I nod. “This seems like nothing.”
“You go to NYU?” she asks.
I pause for a second and then I nod.
“Me too. For photography.” She wipes the counter with a white cloth. “What’s your major?”
I know my answer without thinking about it. This is getting easier.
“English,” I say.
“Have you had Professor Kirk yet?”
I shake my head.
“She’s awesome. Take her class soon.” She puts her hand over the counter. “I’m Emily, by the way.”
“Phoebe,” I say, shaking it. Who knows why, but my alternate identity doesn’t seem to need a pseudonym.
“Vanilla latte,” the barista calls, and I take the porcelain cup and saucer from him.
“Hey,” Emily says. “We’re looking for another cashier. If you need a job, I mean.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
I sit down at a table by the window, take out my new book and open it in the middle. I read a poem by Rita Dove, then one by Anne Sexton. I read one by Elizabeth Bishop called “One Art,” which is about losing: things, places, people. The end of the poem seems so true and vivid and perfect that it makes me want to cry, especially with all the losing and finding I’ve done lately. I whisper-read it here at the table because I want to say the words out loud. “‘It’s evident the art of losing’s not hard to master, though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.’”
Exactly. I want to figure out how to do this: tell the truth like I’m telling a secret. Say what I’ve always known in a way that seems totally new.
On the train to Brooklyn, I lean back in the plastic seat and close my eyes. Archer still hasn’t texted, and soon I’ll be forced to consider the fact that I leave tomorrow and I might not see him before I do. This leaves a hollow feeling in my belly, as if someone took something from me and forgot to give it back. I could text him, I know, but I don’t know what to say. I can’t speak lyrics right now. I’d rather talk to him in real life.
But even though that feels shitty—it just does—I’m here, and I’m getting something done. I’m helping Luna. I saw my father. I did what I came here to do. I know I won’t leave New York regretting any of it.
When she was a senior, Luna had a friend named Leah who got pregnant the fall before they graduated. She was quiet and thoughtful and really smart, and Sister Rosamond seemed especially brokenhearted when Leah’s bump first started to show. For a while no one was sure if she’d be allowed to go to graduation, but the nuns came through and she walked across the stage in a long white gown like the rest of the girls, her face glowing over a dozen red roses and her beautiful belly. Luna threw her a baby shower a few weeks later, and she got up super early to bake three dozen cookies in the shape of teddy bears.
Now, on the train, I wonder what a pregnant Luna would be like. Would she crave chocolate-covered pretzels or bright red watermelon, leaving the crescent-shaped rinds all over the kitchen table? Would she find perfect slim jersey dresses that would fit close to the curve of her belly, and walk around with her hands on either side of it as if she were covering the baby’s ears? Would she move back home? Maybe she’d have to give everything up. But maybe not: my mother didn’t, at least not right away. A scene flashes in my head: me touring with the Moons like Aunt Kit did with Shelter, Luna’s baby in soundproof earmuffs, asleep in my arms. Sure, my mother would kill me, but I’d get to go somewhere, to be with Luna and Archer and my nameless niece or nephew.
Of course, I don’t know whether Luna would have the baby at all.
Somewhere in Lower Manhattan I notice that there’s a girl in the seat across from me, a big white sketch pad open across her lap. Her hair is wound into a hundred tiny black braids over her shoulders. I’m trying not to look at her but after I while I realize that she’s looking at me. I catch her eye.
“You’re drawing me,” I say, a statement, not a question. The wall of the train tunnel lights up with sparks from the track.
The girl smiles and bites her lip. “Yes.” She holds her pencil in the air over the paper. “Is that okay?”
“I guess,” I say, but I’m smiling too. There are only a few people on this train car, but still it really feels like she’s chosen me.
“I’m an art student,” she says. “Sometimes I ride the train around for a few hours and sketch.” She flips through her pad and I see the portraits she’s drawn, shaded in pencil and full of quick jagged lines. “Usually the people don’t notice.”
We pull away from Bowling Green and start that long, lurching ride under the river, the train screeching on the tracks.
“I guess I don’t have anything else to do but notice,” I say. I glance out the window as if there’s something to see, but it’s just dark walls and graffiti in the tunnels. “I should tell you that I’m getting off at Borough Hall.”
“Then I guess I’d better finish,” she says. “You can see it if you want.”
I shrug. Part of me does want to see it, but more than that I want to believe that she sees me the way no one else does, that she has found a way through her pencil to see the me I haven’t even figured out yet.
When the train stops at Borough Hall I smile at the girl and she looks up and smiles back. She puts her pencil flat against the page and starts to angle the sketch pad toward me. But before I can see it I hop up and stand near the doors before they open.
“Thanks,” I say, but I shake my head. I’m looking out the windows, waiting for the platform to appear in front of me. I’m almost afraid to look—I’d rather just imagine she got it right. “I’m sure it’s great,” I say, and when the train’s doors slide open, I step out and don’t look back.
forty-two
MEG
AUGUST 1993
OUT THE HOTEL WINDOW, I could see a few buildings on Fifth Avenue rise above the trees across the park, dark against the sun-washed sky. I squinted into the brightness and then turned back to the room. In front of me, the bed looked like a cloud, except instead of water vapor and mist there were thousand-thread-count sheets and a silk duvet. And Kieran, on the left side of the mattress, looking at me.
“I feel like we’re John and Yoko,” he said. “Let’s have a bed-in.” He reached toward me and I crawled across the bed and settled in his arms.
“I think we need a cause,” I said, my head against his chest. “Peace, maybe. In homage to the ones who came before.”
“Peace is great,” Kieran said, “but the cause is that we’re at the Ritz and we need to take advantage of it.” He tipped one of the open champagne bottles on the bedside table over a glass flute, but it was empty. Only a few pale golden drops fell out. “Hmm,” he said, half to himself. “We’re going to have to get more.”
It felt magical, being there. It was like heaven, everything white and glowing and half-blurred. But the truth was that everything was magical, lately. Like the week before, when Paul Westerberg came to our show in Minneapolis. I had thought Kieran was going to fall apart on the floor right then, just disintegrate into pieces right there on the stage. But he didn’t. And Paul came backstage afterward and drank beers with us, still wearing his sunglasses, and after a while he seemed like just a guy and not someone who used to be the singer for the Replacements, a band Kieran has idolized since he was twelve years old. Thing
s changed like that, lately. They transformed.
“If you could eat anything right now,” Kieran said, “what would you order?”
I thought about it. “Hot fudge sundae, samosas, and . . . coconut soup from the Thai place we went to in December, on Fifty-Seventh. That’s only a few blocks away.”
Kieran gestured to the phone. “Make it happen, babe.” He rolled onto his side. “Make that guy say, It’s my pleasurrrre.”
“The concierge,” I said. “That’s what he’s called.”
“Whatever,” Kieran said, smiling. “He’ll get whatever we want, Rick said.”
“Okay,” I said.
I picked up the receiver and the voice was already answering before I got it to my ear.
“Would you like the sundae while we’re getting the rest?” he asked. “We have that on hand.”
“Of course,” I said. It seemed like the right answer, and I did want that sundae right then. I’d never been able to snap my fingers and produce fancy ice cream before. It was like having a magical power.
“We’ll send it right up,” he said.
I remembered my manners. “Thank you,” I said.
“You’re very welcome.”
When I hung up the phone, I stood up on the bed, my feet sinking into the duvet like I was walking on a cloud. I did a little Charleston-like dance move, while Kieran watched.
“Did you think we’d get here?” he asked. “In the beginning, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I think I always did.” He pushes his hair out of his eyes. “I knew as soon as I saw you.”
I took a step toward him, then leaned down and kissed him on the nose. I pulled him up to standing.
“Did you know,” I said, “that we’d one day jump on a really big bed at the Ritz?” I started jumping and he followed, the two of us in rhythm.
“Yes!” Kieran shouted, and somehow, over our jumping, I heard a knock at the door. I fell to the mattress, bouncing, and hopped off onto the floor. Kieran was still jumping when I opened the door.
And there, in a silver dish on a white-cloth-covered cart in the hallway, was the most beautiful hot fudge sundae I had ever seen. With two spoons.
forty-three
OUT ON COURT STREET, it’s after eight o’clock and the sky is darkening, streaked with pink and gray cirrus clouds. I’m standing on a sidewalk speckled with gum in Jackson Pollock patterns. Above me, the Duane Reade sign glows neon scarlet and strangely, I find it comforting. But I don’t want to go inside.
Because if I go inside, there’s an ending to this story. Maybe Luna is pregnant and maybe she’s not, but either way, we have to pick a way forward. Here, right now, it’s Schrödinger’s uterus. She seemed so heartbroken when I left—I’m afraid everything will be different for both of us either way.
My phone rings in my backpack then, and I step closer to the building and pull it out. It’s Aunt Kit, so I answer.
“Darling niece,” she says, instead of hello.
“Darling aunt,” I say.
“I hear you’re visiting our old haunts. Where are you now?”
I look up at the drugstore sign. “Um, near Luna’s. Just stopping at the store.”
“Look, rosebud, I’m on a mission here. Will you please call your mother back?” She waits one beat. “I know she’s a pain sometimes, but she loves you.”
“I know that,” I say. “I just need a little space.”
“Totally understandable,” Kit says, drawing out the words. “But as you have your space, just know that I’m losing mine. She keeps calling me . . . and calling me.” She pauses. “Listen, I know she wants you to talk to Luna. Have you done it yet?”
I take a breath. The door to Duane Reade slides open, and I can hear the song that’s playing inside: Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” Indeed.
“I’ve talked to her, sure,” I say, “in that I have spoken words in her presence.” Kit exhales a laugh, and I smile too. “But I haven’t told her I think she should go back to school.”
“Why not?” Kit says this in a voice that isn’t at all accusing, just curious.
“Because I don’t know if she should.” As I say it for the first time, I realize that it’s true.
“It’s okay not to know,” Kit says. A car honks on the street in front of me and I strain to hear her. “And I can understand wanting to let her make her own decisions. But I can also understand your mom’s worry.”
I probably could too, if I knew where the worry came from. “Aunt Kit?”
“What, marigold?” She’s used flower nicknames for Luna and me for as long as I can remember. In this moment, I wish I could pull her through the phone to help me with all of this. To tell me what to do. But instead I just ask her a question.
“What was it like? When Shelter was together?” I take a breath. “I know you were there.”
Kit doesn’t say anything for a moment. “Sometimes it was incredible,” she says. “And sometimes it was really hard for your mom.” She pauses. “I’ll tell you about it sometime. But you should ask your mom about it.”
“She won’t tell us. She’s never told us anything.”
“Try again.” Kit says this gently. “But in the meantime, call her, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And be careful in the big city. Adios, dandelion.”
“Bye,” I say. When I hang up, I feel a rush of sadness run through me like a sudden rainstorm.
An old woman wrapped in a purple shawl leaves the store and the doors whoosh open. Air-conditioning envelops me like a cloud. So I walk forward, and when I step in I can almost see the coolness of the air, glowing blue and luminescent. The fluorescent lights hum over my head.
I’ve never bought a pregnancy test before. I’ve never had a reason to buy a pregnancy test. I don’t know what aisle they’re in, or how to pick one, but I do know I don’t want the test to be the only thing in my basket.
I wind a labyrinthine path through the aisles, figuring I’ll come upon the tests eventually. I pick out the kind of strawberry lip gloss Luna used to wear when she was little, one with a bright red sparkly label and cartoon berries on the cap. I get the kind I used to like best too: orange creamsicle. We got them every year in our Christmas stockings when we were kids, and now I’m trying to remember when that stopped. Even without opening this tube, I can still remember the plastic sweetness on my lips, always half-melted from being carried in my pocket.
In the candy aisle I get M&M’s for Luna, and a Milky Way for me. I pick up six different kinds of gum and read the ingredients as if I know what any of the words mean. Probably I should just find the tests. Probably they’re in the aisle with the condoms? Buy one before, or the other after. Probably I’m starting to look like a suspicious person and the security guard will soon start to follow me around the aisles.
Finally I find the tests. They range in price from seven dollars to twenty-eight, and I’m not certain what could possibly be worth paying twenty-one dollars more. It tells you if your baby is a boy or a girl? If she’ll get into Harvard? It gives you a negative result if you want one, time-traveling back to make a pregnancy untrue? That would be worth it, I guess.
I choose three tests on the lower end of the price range, figuring that I’m making up in quantity what might be missing in quality.
My mother must have done this, twenty years ago. She must have stood in a store with a basket, or no basket, if she was brave enough to buy it alone. She has a sister, of course, but my mother was on tour then, and I don’t think Aunt Kit went out with them much until Luna was born. Just now, I would give anything to know what it was like for my mother, but you couldn’t pay me enough to call her up and ask. Because she’d want to know why, and because I would have to tell her. And because she’d know from my voice.
The last time we were in New York together, my mother and Luna and I, was when we came to look at colleges in the summer before Luna’s senior year. We stayed where we always do, with
my mom’s friend Iris from art school (a fantastically wacky painter with a pit bull named Jack and hair bleached so blond it’s practically white) in her crazy loft on Prince Street. She bought it a million years ago, when artists could afford to live in that neighborhood, and though I know my mother wouldn’t trade our house on Ashland, she loves Iris’s apartment. Her favorite thing is the tiny terrace off the living room. I won’t even go out there—it seems too rickety, and I can imagine crashing six floors down when the wrought iron finally disintegrates after a hundred years of hanging on up there. But every time I’d wake up in the morning, she’d be out there, sitting in an aluminum-framed lawn chair, drinking matcha tea. I wonder now if she was listening to the traffic on the street below and imagining some other version of her life, one where Luna and I hadn’t come along when we did and she might have stayed in New York, stayed in Shelter. I wonder if she missed that.
The cashier is a girl, thank god, maybe Luna’s age or a little older, with a purple streak painted down the center of her blond hair. She doesn’t say anything about the pregnancy tests as she rings them up, but she does smile at me.
“I used to love that lip gloss,” she says, holding the package up in front of her.
“I still love it,” I say. “At least I think I do.” My voice comes out shaky and strange-sounding, and I wonder if she can smell the whiskey on my breath, the whiskey I drank two hours ago in Luna and James’s kitchen. I want to tell her that I’m not the least bit drunk, that the world seems blurry but the problem is with the world and not with me. I want to tell her that my sister might be pregnant and that stories repeat sometimes but everything gets jumbled in the second telling. I want to tell her that this could break my mother’s heart.
But I don’t tell her any of this. We just smile without looking at each other and I pay with two twenties from Luna’s wallet. And then I take my change and the bag and I just walk right out of the store, out in the street, out toward Luna.
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