Undressing the Moon Read online

  Blue’s breath was warm on my scalp as he breathed into my hair. He whispered into my hair, but the words got tangled up. I could feel him pressing against me, his hips pressing against my hips. I wanted him to be closer. I wanted to hold him so hard he would fall into me, like a ghost, transparent like water. Everything was liquid and buzzing.

  When he finally kissed me, I was startled. I’d been so conscious of our bodies that the cold clang of his teeth against mine interrupted the watery dream. His lips were thicker than I expected, his tongue pressing as hard as hips. But soon, the kiss became as liquid as the music, and I wanted it to go on forever.

  He looked at me, his eyebrows raised, asking permission, and I nodded.

  Gently, he steered me out of the living room and up the stairs. He grabbed two beers from the coffee table on the way and handed me one as we reached the landing. I sat down on one of the steps and struggled to get the cap off.

  “Here,” he said, taking the bottle and sitting next to me. He unscrewed the cap and handed it back.

  “Thanks.” I swallowed long and hard, wanting this moment to last forever.

  We sat on the steps, watching everyone in the living room, until our beers were gone. He set the empty bottles on the flat part of the banister and helped me up. I followed him up the stairs and down a long hallway that smelled like cedar, into someone’s room.

  It must have been a guest room. There was nothing personal in there. No photos or books. Nothing that could have belonged to anybody. For some reason this made me sad.

  “You okay?” he asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed and taking both of my hands.

  I nodded and wanted, needed, to sit down. I sat down next to him on the hard mattress, and he circled me with his arms. The bedspread was red and blue plaid.

  He kissed me again and we lay on our sides, pressing into each other until there were no spaces between us anymore. He pushed his knee between my legs, and I liked the way it felt. I liked the way it felt when his hands reached under my shirt and found the skin underneath. I wanted to feel his skin against my skin. I wanted to know.

  But under me the bed was beginning to turn. When I closed my eyes I could see the faces of Kyle’s family, framed in red turtleneck sweaters, and spinning. I could see Roxanne in her parka, her flask reflecting the sun. I saw my father’s bruised face, the colors of red and blue slowly turning into the plaid bedspread beneath my fingers. The water had turned into waves.

  “Stop,” I whispered into Blue’s hands as they found my face.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I love you.”

  I love you, love you. And then his skin against my skin. And I was spinning, just a top, just a toy, just a girl spinning with her arms out before falling to the ground. The spinning stopped when I felt his hands pressed against the inside of my knees, pushing them apart. I was almost grateful to him for stopping the reeling. I could feel bile rising in my throat. And then he was on top of me, keeping me still, keeping me grounded, his fingers working hard to pull aside my cotton panties, working hard to open me up. To open me to open me to open me. Prying.

  Downstairs, the bass pounded so hard I could feel it in my temples and in my eyes. I could feel it in his hips. I could feel it as he found his way inside.

  Afterward, he kissed me, furiously, across my sweaty forehead and stomach, across my naked thighs. And then he said, “I’ll be right back,” and left me in the room that belonged to no one. Opened wide, everything revealed. All of my secrets stolen. In the bathroom I found at the end of the hall, I threw up all over the toilet seat and on the floor. I was completely empty now, and I guessed that meant I was truly grown.

  I used to think about having a family, about a husband and the way an infant might feel like a small bird, lying on my chest. I dreamed the same things everyone else dreamed. I wanted the same things.

  Over the years, the faces of my boyfriends have been different, but there has always been something similar about them. My choices are predictable, inevitable. I always look for something removed in their eyes. Something distant. I don’t search consciously; I am just being careful. I don’t need anyone getting too attached. It would bring me too close to those dreams I used to entertain. Maybe I have always known I was dying.

  I wish I weren’t alone now, though. It makes me sad that I’ve spent my life keeping men at a careful distance. If I’d lapsed even once and found someone whose eyes didn’t have that vague dimensionless quality, then maybe I wouldn’t live alone with my aging greyhound now.

  Becca believes it’s not too late for me. That, as in the movies where the heroine dies, some gentle stranger will find me and love me until it’s over. I allow her this hope. I think it keeps her going, gives her a mission. She’s looking for him.

  The first thing I thought when I pulled the music box out of the closet was that maybe it wasn’t too late. If anyone would love the fragments I have become it would be he. For a few terrifying moments, I thought about looking again. Since I lost him, this feeling has come over me more times than I will ever admit. In light of the light that is fading, I am thinking about him again.

  At the Quimby Atheneum, there is a room filled with computers that can connect you with anyone you’ve lost. Finding someone is as simple as a few key strokes. Quimby, which was always so remote, is now instantly connected to everything that was mysterious and unknowable before. Nothing is a secret anymore. Nothing is out of reach. But each time the impulse to find him touches me, the way his fingers once touched me (tentative, gentle, and scared), I stop it. I slam the drawer shut. I turn off the light. Like my mother, he would be a stranger to me now.

  Becca remains hopeful. She invited her friend Jason from New York to come spend Thanksgiving with her. She has been talking about him incessantly lately. When he accepted, she was beside herself.

  “You’re going to love him. This is going to be great. I am so excited. Do you want to have Thanksgiving dinner here? You’ve got so much more room. I’ll do all the work. It will be fantastic.”

  He arrived on Wednesday night and she brought him straight from the bus station to my apartment. She opened up a bottle of wine, even poured a forbidden glass for me, and situated him next to me on my couch. She sat across from us in the big wing chair Boo got at a flea market in Maine, smiling. Halfway through the bottle of wine, she said, “I’m going to the store. I forgot to get the sweet potatoes.”

  “You want me to come with you?” Jason asked.

  “That’s okay. You guys stay here and chat.”

  And then she was gone, and we were alone. It was the first time I’d been alone with a guy in a room in a year.

  “So, you’re a seamstress?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  He looked at me oddly and then reached for another bottle of wine, busying his hands with the foil and corkscrew. I worried that we’d sit like this in silence until Becca returned if I didn’t say something quickly.

  “I used to be a singer,” I said. “Back in the day.”

  He set the bottle down on the coffee table. “Back in the day. How old are you? You don’t look more than twenty-five.”

  “Oh, flatter me some more,” I said.

  What he couldn’t know, what I couldn’t tell him because I’d just met him an hour before, was that I thought of my life like this. Before illness. And now. And that everything that happened before was like ancient history. Back in the day before illness.

  “Were you in a band?” he asked.

  “A couple of bands,” I lied. I felt very much like an old woman, trying to reach back (past senility, into time). But there was nothing to grab onto. I had stopped singing when I was still a child.

  “Punk rock?” he asked, grinning at my nearly bald head.

  “Blues.” And I could see what might have been. Smoky bar and smoky voice and sparkly dress.

  “Mmmm,” he said, sipping on his wine.

  I was grateful when Becca came back fifteen minutes later, clutching her
plastic bag of sweet potatoes.

  Thanksgiving morning, I woke up feeling a lot of pain. It seemed to reside mostly in my tail bone, emanating out to the other parts of my lower back. It was all I could do to sit up. In the kitchen, I could hear Becca and Jason preparing the turkey. The TV was loud with the Macy’s parade.

  I reached for some painkillers I’d left on my nightstand, and swallowed them dry. I could feel them as they made their way down my throat. I lay back down and tried to wish the pain away.

  When Becca came in to check on me at eleven o’clock, I was starting to feel better.

  “Let’s pick out something pretty for you to wear,” she said, staring into my closet. I hadn’t touched most of those clothes in over a month. I’d divided my clothes into two categories: comfortable and uncomfortable. I shoved all of the uncomfortable clothes into my closet and filled my bureau drawers with T-shirts, pajama bottoms, leggings, and soft sweaters.

  She pulled out a Chinese print skirt with frogs along the side slit and a scoop-neck black velvet blouse. Black stockings and ankle-strap heels.

  I shook my head.

  “Come on,” she pleaded. She was wearing her favorite black linen sleeveless dress, despite the thermometer’s reading of 10 degrees. Silver hoop earrings and heels.

  “Fine, but no bra and no stockings.”

  “How risqué,” she said.

  I pulled the blouse over my head; it felt tight compared to the loose T-shirts I’d been sporting lately. I slipped the skirt on next and buttoned it. It slipped down to my hips, hesitated, and then slipped down to the floor, making a pile of embroidered red around my feet.

  Becca stared at the skirt, which had fit me just six months ago, and said, “That’s okay. Let me find something else. Step out of that.”

  I stared at my feet as she rummaged through my clothes for something that would fit me. Finally, she pulled out a wraparound rayon skirt, black with little yellow flowers all over it. She wrapped it around me like a bandage, adjusting the ties to my new body. “Perfect,” she said, smiling proudly.

  “Can we skip the shoes?” I asked. “My back’s been hurting this morning.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Want your slippers? The floors are freezing.”

  I nodded and she reached under the bed where I had kicked my yellow terrycloth slippers. “They match!” she said, holding them against my skirt.

  Dinner was beautiful. The turkey was tender and juicy. Becca made twice-baked potatoes with bacon and sour cream. Pumpkin soup and cranberry-raspberry aspic. I almost cried when I saw the table.

  Jason entertained us with stories about his auditions for various on- and off-Broadway shows in New York. He was a bit of a showoff, but I liked him anyway. After a couple of glasses of wine, he could do perfect imitations of Marge Simpson and Edith Bunker. He knew all the words to “Those Were the Days,” and he could make a playing card appear from behind my ear.

  Becca clapped gleefully, like a child, with each of his tricks, begging him to do just one more. We drank coffee, ate pie and ice cream, listened to music and danced. Outside, winter descended around us, covering the park in a thin coat of crystalline white. Anyone looking up into the orange glow of my attic living room windows would have seen the silhouettes of three people. Happy people. Normal people dancing on Thanksgiving evening. But at seven o’clock, the pain returned to my back, spreading around to my hips like lovers’ hands. I ignored the deep ache, willing it away, wishing it away. Pretending it was only from the dancing.

  Jason and Becca were happily tipsy, finishing another bottle of wine after the dishes were clean and sitting in the cupboard again.

  “I’m sleepy.” Becca yawned. “I need a nap. You guys mind if I lie down for a bit?”

  Jason said, “Nope.”

  I shook my head. He and I were sitting on my couch, watching the snow fall.

  While Becca was sleeping, Jason tried to kiss me. I knew he would; I knew this was all planned. I knew from the way Becca kept nudging him to sit closer to me. From the way he blushed.

  In the warm orange glow of the living room, as he pulled a card out from under my seat cushion, I thought about how easy it would be to rely on the easy gestures I used to use: the inside of my wrist pressed gently to my temples, the familiar tilt of my head to signify interest, the simple scratch of an ankle. He was trying so hard. But the pain in my back was intense now; it would not be ignored. It was all I could do to concentrate on the cards in his hands.

  When he put my card back, set the deck on the coffee table, and sat back into the soft cushions of the couch, the pain shot up both sides of my spine and settled in my shoulders. Quietly. Maybe it would let me be tonight. Just let me be.

  “You’re very pretty,” he said softly. We’d been whispering since Becca disappeared into my bedroom.

  “Thanks,” I said. Fingers of pain rubbed my shoulders. I ignored them and looked at him. I’d never seen eyes that shade of green.

  He reached for my hand, quietly, without fuss, and I let him hold on.

  “I’m glad I came,” he smiled, tilting his head, examining me.

  “Me too,” I said, and the fingers of pain tapped me on the back, reminding me. I winced.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded, blinking hard.

  “It must take a lot of strength …” he started. “To do what you’re doing.”

  “And what’s that?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, leaning toward me. “I only meant I admire you.”

  His face was close to my face and his eyes were closed. I could have let go. I could have let him in. But the pain shot down both of my arms, and I watched my hands reach forward, grabbing his shoulders, pushing him away. His eyes blinked open, but I didn’t let go.

  “What is it that you admire?” I hissed.

  He looked terrified. “My mother—my mother had breast cancer.”

  “Did she survive?” I demanded, still holding on to him.

  “Yes. She’s been in remission for ten years.”

  “Well, I’m dying, Jason. I am dying and I’m scared shitless.” The pain was retreating now, out of my wrists. I let go of his shoulders and put my hands in my lap. “Admire your mother. Don’t admire me.”

  Jason looked at me the way you look at a wounded animal, and I whispered, “I’m not feeling well. I think you should go.”

  He nodded and went into my bedroom, where he woke up Becca and got her keys. I watched him drive away, and the only pain I felt now was the hard lump in my chest. Becca came out into the living room after he was gone, her linen dress wrinkled, makeup smudged under her eyes.

  “What happened?” she asked, pulling her hair out of the messy braid.

  “He tried to kiss me,” I said. “I didn’t want to be kissed.”

  “Why not?” Becca asked. “I thought you liked him.”

  “I did, I do, I just didn’t want that. I don’t need a boyfriend right now.”

  Becca sat down in the chair opposite me. Her jaw was set. “It was just a kiss.”

  “I just don’t need that kind of complication in my life.”

  Becca looked out the window at the fresh snow. And then she said softly, “What life?”

  I stared at her face; I hardly recognized her.

  “You act like you’re already dead,” she said, her voice becoming stronger. But she still wouldn’t look at me. “You aren’t even trying to stay alive anymore. It’s like you don’t even care.”

  “Maybe I don’t,” I said, shrugging the pain out of my shoulders.

  After a few moments, Becca turned to me again. “I don’t believe you.”

  TWO

  If winter here were made of colored glass, this is the way the light would shine through the winter I was fourteen: the strange blue of icicles hanging like daggers from our roof, the gray of rain gutters heavy with snow that would not melt, the white of snow on brown trees, on brown ground, on the brown sawdust frozen Pond.

  The morning after K
yle Kaplan’s party, I almost called Mr. Hammer and canceled our lesson. But when I woke up I knew that if I didn’t get out of bed I might stay there forever. I wondered if anyone had ever done that before—just refused to get out of bed. It seemed like a strange fairy tale or nursery rhyme. I would be the girl who wouldn’t get up, the girl whose hair grew around the bedposts, tethering her there.

  So I pulled myself out of bed, out of my pajamas, and stared at myself in the mirror. I didn’t look any different. I didn’t look broken. But in the bathroom, it burned when I peed and I couldn’t stop crying even after I had flushed the toilet.

  Quinn’s first race was today; he was already gone. I was grateful for his absence. He hadn’t even known anything was wrong when he picked me up from Kyle’s house the night before. He had handed me a toothbrush though, an aspirin, and a glass of water. He must have smelled the vomit on my breath, despite the stale Butter Rum Life Saver I’d found in my coat pocket.

  I showered until the hot water was gone and my skin was flushed red. I put on my red union suit and two other layers of clothes. I pulled my hair back into a tight ponytail, trying to change the features on my face, but it just made me look wide-eyed and strange.

  It was a half-hour before my lesson, so I walked through the woods to the Pond before heading down the road to Gormlaith. In wintertime, abandoned things are buried. Rusty car parts, garbage, and glass are sunken treasures, under an ocean of white. Even the sawdust is hidden in winter.

  At the Pond, everything was still. Serene. There was no wind that day; everything was utterly motionless. Frozen. I thought that if I stood there long enough, I might freeze, too. Soon, my arms would grow heavy with the weight of new snow, and my legs might turn into roots that would grow deep into the ground. But despite the complete calm, my heart was racing. I rushed quickly down the bank, looking for something to disturb this terrible peace. Finally I found a large rock, almost too heavy to lift, and put my mittened hands around it. It came loose from the frozen ground easily, but I could feel the muscles in my back straining with the weight. Finally, I was able to pick it up, and I ran to the water’s edge with it. I looked at the perfect white of new ice and thought about setting the rock down, preserving this perfect quiet. But underneath all those layers of clothes, I could still feel the sting of what Blue had done and what I had failed to do, and I pushed the rock through the air as hard as I could. It hit the ice and immediately broke through. Cracks grew like an icy spiderweb as the rock sank to the bottom of the Pond. I stepped back, out of breath, my back hurting, and swallowed hard. Sometimes things need to get broken, she’d said.