Starry Night

by Isabel Gillies

  “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. When I was twelve, like you guys, growing up on Long Island, this place used to be a dump. Nowheresville. But it got cleaned up. Big real estate honchos built swanky condos, and now”—he slowed down, looking at street signs—“some of my best customers are here.” We stopped in front of a big redbrick building with lots and lots of gigantic arched windows. I would guess it used to be a factory. Now there was a doorman in a cap and a long coat standing guard out front.

  “Okay, Wrenny and Charlie, do your thing!” He shoved the gearshift into park. Charlie has a baby face, with freckles around his nose and cheeks and a thick shock of hair that sticks straight up (even though he combs it carefully down anytime he glances in a mirror) and looks like a mowed wheat field, which I think is cool but drives him bananas. His teeth, before he got braces, sort of stuck out and they were rounded on the bottom. I never would tell him this, but his teeth used to make him look a little bit like that Mad magazine guy. But he has always had sophisticated clothes and even at age twelve—even at four—he looked like an adult.

  Before getting out of the van, Charlie buttoned his navy-blue peacoat, making sure all the buttons were right, and checked the cuffs at the bottom of his not-scruffy blue jeans. When we were little my mother called him “our little clotheshorse,” sort of teasing him, but she stopped when we passed fourth grade and she realized his tidy, stylish appearance wasn’t some cute affectation of a child. It was his nature.

  “Can I carry the bags this time, Charlie, and you get the list?” I asked, making my way around to the back of the van.

  “Sure, but it’s more gentlemanly if I carry the bags,” he said, joining me.

  “Okay, why don’t you give me the list? I’ll read the names and what each person is getting. You check that I didn’t mess up, and then we’ll both carry the bags. I just don’t want to make a mistake with the checking,” I said, in my most serious “work” voice.

  “Don’t drop these, guys! This is a soup order!” Winston yelled back to us.

  “Oh gosh, yeah,” Charlie said, looking at the order form and then up at the building. “This is an important building for Nosh, there are five families that do business with us from here. All of them order a lot of soup. They are soup eaters, I guess.”

  “Soup is good food,” I said, losing my work mojo for a second and laughing at my own joke. Charlie didn’t really get it because it’s from an old commercial that was on TV when my mother was young. She always says it when she serves soup, but Charlie laughed anyway.

  “Especially if it’s Moroccan turkey lentil.” He smiled but then got back to business. “I better double-check this one, Wrenny,” he said.

  “Okay, I’ll be really careful about reading the names correctly,” I said. Charlie looked at me from where he had climbed into the back of the van, hovering over the many brown shopping bags full of meals for the week.

  “Wren, you hardly ever make mistakes reading anymore.” Charlie purposefully took a moment to look at me while he said that.

  “Thanks, Charlie. I’m trying.”

  “Well, you’re doing a good job.” He went back to looking at the names on the labels stapled to the handles of the bags. “I wouldn’t want to do this job with anyone else but you.”

  I smiled. He smiled. Charlie is a really good student. He wins spelling bees at St. Tim’s and reads like a champ, but he had some kind of speech thing when he was little, he couldn’t say his R’s, so he is empathetic to all my learning difficulties.

  “Meister is the first name. The order is for three quarts of white bean and escarole soup and a lasagna.” I read slowly and proudly.

  “Check!” Charlie carefully lifted two brown bags out of the back of the van. Then he paused, put one bag down, and looked in the other.

  “Wait, Wrenny, Meister is the first name?”

  I looked at the list again and realized I was wrong; Hermann was the first name, not Meister.

  “Sorry, you are right. Hermann is the first name.” I took a deep, wobbly breath. It’s the same breath I take in math class when I am about to get an answer wrong.

  “Could I please see the list, Wrenny—just to check, I’m sure you are right, I’m probably confused.” I handed him the list and he started reading it over and looking at the bags.

  “Whoops. Yeah, I think actually the last name is Hermann—it’s a different family altogether. The Hermanns get the white bean soup and lasagna. The Meisters also get white bean soup, but they get crostini with theirs.” He smiled sweetly at me, turned around back into the van, and exchanged a bag. “It’s small type, don’t worry, Wrenny.” I felt tears well up—if I couldn’t get the stupid names correct on a catering list, what future did I have at all? And I almost messed up the whole important-building order.

  “Wren, we are a team, that’s how we get it right in the end. Okay?”

  I nodded. Charlie was the first person, other than my parents, to stick with me.

  5

  Now we go back even further in time, from seventh grade to fourth.

  Just being Turtles—and having this long history together—did not leave us unsusceptible to the evils of fourth grade, where all of a sudden it could be true that a girl you spent most of third grade with playing Little House on the Prairie during roof time, the next year that same girl wouldn’t stand next to you in line. Reagan was in my class, which I thought was a good thing, but because of a few lucky reading-partner groupings, she ended up at the epicenter of the clique of intimidating good-at-making-friendship-bracelet cool girls headed by Melissa Ryan. Melissa ruled our class like Henry VIII from kindergarten through fifth grade, until she moved to Scarsdale. I was not in the good-readers clique. I was in the needs-to-go-to-special-English clique, which wasn’t really a clique, more like a one-man band. To blame my marginalization on my learning disabilities might sound delusional and paranoid because it has been drilled into our heads since we were in first grade that everyone “learns differently,” but if you ask me, kids who “learn easily” feel good about themselves, and confident in a way that I know for a fact I never have.

  Lunchroom at Hatcher: supervised insanity—lower-school girls looking like Eloise in navy-blue uniforms and puffy-sleeved white button-down blouses, sitting at long white linoleum fold-out tables. Pitchers of ice water and heavy plastic plates of “rabbit food” (cut-up carrots and celery, but the ladies in the lunchroom called it “rabbit food” even though I don’t think a real rabbit has ever seen a piece of celery in the wild) grace every table to accompany the main course of pale roasted chicken and boiled rice. I was at the end of the table, wishing I were closer to where Melissa and Reagan were sitting.

  “So, guys, what do you want to talk about?” I said, throwing my voice like a stage actor so I could be heard in the center of the hub.

  I got a blank stare and a possible are-you-kidding-me squint out of mean-Melissa’s eye.

  I continued, not being as good as I might have been with social cues yet. “How about … if we were horses, what color would we be? I would be a dappled gray one.” I laughed nervously and thought I might pee in my pants.

  “Wren, what are you even talking about?” Reagan said, to the tune of all the alpha (maybe-as-insecure-as-I-was-but-sure-didn’t-look-it) girls laughing in unison. Reagan and I had just had that very same, totally fun what-horse-would-you-be conversation over the summer in my garden and I knew she would be a chestnut brown one, so I looked at her like, Huh?

  “I can’t quite tell, Wren, but are you”—wait for it—“retarded?” Melissa said, like a Marine-trained sniper.

  Retarded?

  I laughed at my own expense to fit in with everyone else, but it felt like someone had just made me swallow a clementine. Before I actually wet my pants or cried or vomited, I heard a clear, strong voice behind me.

  “I would be a black-as-night thoroughbred with four white socks and a star,” said Farah, from a kinder, gentler table, throwing her voice way mor
e effectively than I had. There was a big blister of a pause. The girls were silenced.

  “I can see that,” I said, as the clementine made its way out of my esophagus and down into my tummy, where I could still feel it but where it didn’t hurt so badly.

  “We can be in the same barn,” Farah said, smiling at me as a few tears fell by mistake out of my eyes.

  6

  Summer after kindergarten.

  Padmavati’s house was my favorite. There was always a moss Diptyque candle burning in the front hallway that made me think I was in a sophisticated place. My mother wasn’t a fan of scented candles. She said they were “too expensive by half,” a fire hazard, and made rooms smell like a brothel. The one at Vati’s house smelled like a place where relaxed people lived—people who ordered in sushi and had guitars in the living room.

  “‘And for all I know he is sitting there still, under his favorite cork tree, smelling the flowers just quietly. He is very happy.’” Padmavati’s mom, Dipa, closed the worn cover of The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, put it down on her skirt embroidered with a Mexican village, tilted her head to the side, and sighed.

  “Oh, how I love Ferdinand,” she said. “He just wanted to be himself, right, girls?”

  “When I am six, I am going to wear flowers in my hair just like the ladies at the bullfights,” Vati said.

  “I don’t think I would want to sit alone under the tree,” I said.

  “How come, Wrenny? I think of you as a very thoughtful person who would be happy under a cork tree, drawing or reading.”

  Padmavati’s mom is an editor at a fancy publishing house. Even when I was five I felt pressure from her to like books and reading. I looked at the very small gold and red bindi dot she always wore on her forehead. Everybody thinks it means you are married, but it doesn’t; it’s just there to make you look pretty. Even babies can wear bindis.

  “I think I would get lonely under the tree,” I said.

  “Did Ferdinand seem lonely?” Dipa asked.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  Vati and I had different responses. I think because I have a brother and a baby sister, I think doing things by yourself seems lonely, and since Vati is an only child she doesn’t. I don’t know why I think that, as I am alone all the time when I draw, but somehow that never feels lonely.

  “Can you read that one about the mermaid and the whale?” I asked, and re-tucked one of the tassely ikat pillows under my head.

  “Oh yes! Please, Mommy!” Vati knelt and put her hands together in begging prayer with a huge smile on her face.

  “Pleeeeeeaaase,” we both said, giggling because we knew it would work like a charm.

  “Oh my goodness! I don’t like that book!” Dipa said, but she went to get it anyway.

  “Her hair is like Rapunzel’s,” I said. “When I am an older girl, I am going to grow my hair like that.”

  “But are you going to chase a crotchety, mean old whale and try to make him love you when clearly he doesn’t?” Dipa snuggled in between the two of us on the big red velvet sofa.

  “I don’t get why that whale doesn’t love her,” Vati said. “She can talk to fish!”

  “I know, sweetheart. She’s smart, she knows all the tides … she’s beautiful, she looks like a supermodel of the Atlantic Ocean whose best friend is a dolphin, and yet she spends her whole life chasing that good-for-nothing whale.”

  “But maybe if she tried harder, the whale would love her,” I said, hoping there was a sequel to the mermaid-and-the-whale book.

  “Wren, dear heart, if a man doesn’t love you, there is nothing you can do to change that. You should just let him swim away.” I remember thinking that clearly Dipa wanted us to glean something from this piece of wisdom. Vati’s parents were divorced but were still great friends—they both stayed in the book club even after their split. I think Dipa might still love Vati’s dad, Jordan, but ever since they were divorced he has always been with Summer, his girlfriend. He never has married Summer, but he never goes back to Dipa either. Confusing.

  “Oh never mind, that is silly.” Dipa shook her head, took a deep breath in, and then said with a twinkle in her eye, “Maybe, Vati, you should write a storybook about a mermaid who is so talented, funny, and beautiful that every single creature in the sea falls in love with her and wants to marry her.”

  She wrapped her hands around our shoulders and squeezed as she said the next part. “But instead, she goes to Ocean College and graduates Summa. Cum. Laude.” She released her grip. “Wrenny, you can illustrate it. Until then, we’ll just read this antiquated book.” She flipped open the cover, looked over the title page, turned it, and as she did said slowly, “Here we go. ‘Once upon a time…’” Dipa licked her long, elegant finger and got ready to turn the page.

  * * *

  Whoosh, I really just went down memory lane. But I kind of had to for you to get where we came from, for you to see who we all were, who we have always been. Sometimes I think people change in only the smallest ways over time. My mother says that kids are basically the same from the moment they come out, and I think that’s true. I hope it’s not altogether true though. There are so many things about myself that I hope one day will change.

  7

  Back to the day of the museum party. Or, much more important, the day I met Nolan.

  “We have to get a move on, my mother is just going to drop off the dresses on her way to the airport,” Farah said, quickening the pace as we walked up the last hill in Central Park before we got to the West Side.

  “There are four hundred people at my house at the moment so someone can take them. Where is your mom going?” I said, checking my phone. It was almost four o’clock.

  “Napa. There is a gentleman there apparently,” Farah said in a no-big-deal way. I didn’t say anything. Farah’s mom’s “adventures” are beyond what I can understand in my parents-have-been-married-my-whole-life brain.

  “Oooohhhh! I am very excited for the party!” Vati skipped a few feet ahead, clapping her hands.

  On the day of the party, the day with the life-changing crazy wind, something else was happening in our house that was making the afternoon feel chaotic. My ten-year-old sister, Dinah, was shooting an episode of her cooking show, Dining with Dinah. Dinah is a celebrity—for real. She is definitely the most famous person I know. Her show is shot in our house on average every eight days for fourteen weeks during the school year. Our mother likes to think she is the kind of person who believes your name should only be in print three times in your life—when you are born, when you get married, and when you die—so the fact that her younger daughter has a hip little “Ask Dinah” cooking column at least three times a year in New York magazine and her own blog is really ironic.

  The whole TV thing started, to Mom’s horror, because one day Eyewitness News, a local newscast, went to Hatcher to do a report about how kids were participating in cooking school lunch. It was some kind of feel-good news story about healthy food awareness. Anyway, Dinah caught their eye. She is one of those adorable kids with almost unimaginable looks-like-it-was-dyed blood orange hair (which she inherited from my maternal grandmother), heavy-cream skin tone, and, of course, freckles—a pretty Pippi Longstocking. She sparkled and charmed the camera chopping away at an onion like Morimoto when she could barely see over the counter. It was just weird how adept she was—AND she has an incongruous New York accent that no one else in the family has. It’s like Fran Drescher raised her. So a day later, when the broadcast ran, a star was born. All you could see was Dinah. She was saying “buttah” and her twinkly sapphire-blue eyes grew in size two or three times when the turkey meat loaf (which is what they were cooking) tumbled perfectly out of the pan. I mean, we knew she could cook—she was eight when she started and could whisk egg whites into stiff peaks like Julia Child. She’s a prodigy—a Mozart of mozzarella. But when all-the-world (pretty much) saw it on the news and then on YouTube (where it went viral), suddenly she wasn’t our
s anymore; she was a sensation.

  I think kids watch Food TV more than cartoons, which is probably why, very soon after Dinah was on the news, Bravo called to say they were interested in having Dinah host a thirty-minute cooking show. Mom was repelled, but Dad, who is more relaxed about publicity and media and sort of everything, convinced Mom that it would only be good for Dinah. I remember him saying at dinner, “Nan, love, it’s a wonderful life experience for her. I don’t see how we can stand in her way.” My mother protested, “I can stand directly in her way, David. She is only NINE!” Dad laughed and put his bent pointer finger under her chin, looking her in the eyes. “Oh, I love you, Nan, my little worrier … Maybe she will be a hit and we can all retire!” Mom laughed too. He had won. Dining with Dinah airs on Saturday mornings. Some of her recipes, like her caramel sauce, you can buy on Gilt.com. She is so famous she wears sunglasses to the Museum of Natural History so the under-eight set doesn’t mob her.

  * * *

  “I feel like I’m about to see Beyoncé and Jay-Z or fall off a cliff or something! This party is freaking me out, I feel all crazy inside. I have never been to a party this big!” Vati said, and skipped again.

  “I think it feels more like going to the prom, or staying up to watch Jimmy Fallon,” I said, huffing. The park is hilly.

  “Staying up to watch Jimmy Fallon? You are such a nerd,” Reagan said, laughing.

  “What, we weren’t allowed to till, like, last year,” I said.

  “None of us have ever been to a prom, nor will we ever go because we go to an all-girls school, Wrenner,” said Farah, quickening her pace. “No, no, no, no, I have a more ominous feeling about tonight, in a good way, but I feel like something disastrous will happen, like a flood.” There was a huge field to our right, where people were walking their dogs and kids were doing after-school sports.