Undressing the Moon Page 16

  “Why did you do this?” I asked, gesturing to the box.

  “It’s not from me,” she said.

  I picked it up and stared at the handwriting that spelled out my name.

  “It was in your mailbox yesterday. I only waited because you were so worn out after the trip to the lake.” Becca picked up my egg and cracked it gently on the edge of the egg cup. She scooped the soft egg out of the shell onto my plate and put the empty shell back in the egg cup.

  I looked at the package and then at Becca. Her expression was serious.

  This time the return address said Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. My hands began to shake, palsied by the fact that my mother was so close. I’d even been to Hampton Beach once before. It was winter, and the entire town was deserted, cold boardwalk andempty Ferris wheels. I tried to imagine the glass she might find there, broken carnival rides and lights. Carousel slivers and broken bottles in the sand. But maybe she didn’t live there at all. Maybe she was only passing through. Maybe she was only like the foul-mouthed carnies who ran the rides and ring-toss games. Maybe she was traveling with the sideshow freaks. Fat lady, bearded lady, snake lady. Maybe she had learned how to walk on the bits of broken glass. Maybe she had learned how to sleep on a bed of them. Maybe the next package would be from Atlantic City, Ocean City, Old Orchard Beach.

  My hands stopped trembling, and I unwrapped the box. Inside was a piece of jewelry I vaguely remembered from the times when I would sit on her bed with her jewelry box spilled on the sheets like a treasure chest. It was a bracelet made from black glass beads, strung together on a silver chain. She’d told me that they were black pearls, the kind you find inside sad oysters. The loneliest oysters who lived at the bottom of the sea. She never wore the bracelet; it was too big for her small wrists. Now, when Becca helped me to put it on, I had to squeeze my thumb tightly against my palm before the bracelet would slip over my hand.

  “It’s pretty,” she said.

  I nodded and touched the black jewels that sadness made.

  The night of the performance, I let myself hope that Mum would be sitting out there in the audience. I allowed myself this. I even imagined that when I sang the harmony to Mr. Hammer’s “Edelweiss” she would realize how much I needed her. I hoped that she would stay in her seat until the lights in the auditorium went on and we all emerged from backstage. I dreamed the smell of roses, and the way my stage makeup might make a smudged orange stain on her blouse.

  In the girls’ locker room where we put on our costumes, Becca paced. Her hair was plaited in two braids with ribbons.

  “Relax,” I said.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Dox you think anyone will come?”

  “Aren’t your parents coming?”

  “I don’t mean my parents,” she said. “I mean other people.” It seemed funny to me, after all the daydreaming I’d done about Mum showing up with roses and hugs, that she could take her own parents for granted.

  “Like who?” I asked.

  “Like … like … our teachers. Other kids. I don’t know.” Becca undid her braid and then rebraided it.

  “Don’t be nervous. Mr. Hammer said they’ve sold out half of the house already. And that’s just people who bought tickets in advance.” It felt strange saying his name. I tried it out throughout the day like this, conjuring him in the strangest places: at the diner, at Hudson’s in the aisle with cereal and diapers and motor oil, in the cafeteria. It was easy, because Becca wanted to talk about him all the time. I could say the words and then he was there. Between us like a spirit.

  I was nervous, too, but for different reasons. I had run into Blue one afternoon when Becca and I were at the diner. He said he was coming to the show. Stupidly, he looked at me the same way he had before the night at Kyle Kaplan’s house, back when he thought I had something to give him. I simply said, “Don’t,” and immediately knew that he would anyway. I was also worried that Jake might come, and that if he showed up, Roxanne and Daddy would come too. It wasn’t the idea of them all coming together, their strange new family, saving each other seats, that bothered me, but that Daddy would hear me sing. I didn’t want him to hear me; my voice was one thing I wanted to keep.

  But when I went out onstage, I couldn’t see anyone at all in the audience, even after my eyes adjusted to the lights. We could have been singing to a theater of ghosts for all I could tell.

  We had been rehearsing for months, but nothing quite prepares you for the reality of a performance. Knowing that we couldn’t call out, “Line!” when the words escaped us created a sort of panic to each moment. I was alarmed by how quickly the first act went. My heart was pounding in my throat as we made our way offstage and the audience’s applause became a distant thunderstorm.

  Backstage, Mr. Hammer gathered us together and made us sit. In his makeup and costume, he looked like a wax model of Mr. Hammer. I was almost startled when he spoke, and the voice that came out was a familiar one.

  “Great job, you guys,” he said. “Very good. Slow it down a bit, though. It’s easy to hurry things when you’re nervous.”

  Mrs. Applebee raised her hand in the annoying way she always did when she wanted his attention to shift to her. “I felt a little crowded in the ‘Favorite Things’ scene.” She looked at us accusingly. Missy Humbolt and Jessica Feldman, the two little girls playing the youngest Von Trapps, were playing cat’s cradle with an old shoelace. “I’d like to have a bit more space when I do my solos.”

  “Okay, keep that in mind, everybody,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “Liesl was supposed to kiss me,” Howie said. I had been kissing the air near his face for so long, I must have forgotten that I was supposed to kiss him for real tonight.

  “Sorry,” I said, more to Mr. Hammer than to Howie.

  “I don’t think anybody noticed,” Mr. Hammer reassured Howie.

  I imagined my mother going to the concession stand set up at every event by the girls’ basketball team, which had yet to secure enough money for matching uniforms. I thought she might order a coffee and the sugar cookies they always sold in threes, stuffed inside wax paper envelopes. I pictured her blushing when someone approached her, asking if she was Piper Kincaid’s mom. Nodding and saying, I’m so proud.

  The second act went as quickly as the first, except that Mrs. Applebee forgot her lines when the Baroness convinces Maria to leave the family and return to the convent. In the wings we watched as she turned three or four consecutively more brilliant shades of red and then blurted the lines as if they’d only been stuck inside her. Mr. Hammer stood behind me in the wings, watching. I could feel his anxiety, but I didn’t know whether it had to do with me or with Mrs. Applebee’s stuttering.

  And then we were all onstage, gathered around Mr. Hammer, as he picked up his guitar and started to pluck the first few notes of “Edelweiss.” Becca looked at me and smiled. This was her favorite song, too. But when Mr. Hammer looked at me, we were suddenly alone. The other cast members were not there, the audience filled with teachers and students and parents was not there. When I sang, the lyrics now as familiar to me as my own breath, we could have been simply sitting alone together in his living room. The music felt like something warm and glowing inside me, something secret and sacred and scary. I closed my eyes and ler my breath weave around his breath, braided like Becca’s hair. Intertwined. Voice embracing voice, hovering above us, wings beating.

  But afterward, where there was usually silence, was the sound of applause. Every inch of my body was buzzing, currents of electricity making my nerves ache. And when Becca looked at me again, sitting on the stage, empty now, her expression was not of envy or jealousy or heartbreak, but of disbelief and fear. She knew.

  I bought an umbrella.

  I bundled up and walked to the drugstore by myself while Becca was napping. My legs were aching, but concentrating on the cold helped to make the pain less real. I left a note on the kitchen table, assuring Becca I would be back soon. That I’d only gone out for
some fresh air.

  Casper was in the park, bent over in his usual task of picking up imaginary bottles. Rather than walking around him the way I (like other Quimby locals) typically did, I approached him.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He looked up at me, his eyes milky with cataracts. “Whatcha want?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said, feeling suddenly ashamed for assuming he’d be interested in talking to me.

  “Everybody wants sumthin’,” he said, blowing on an imaginary bottle and setting it in his shopping cart.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I only meant I didn’t need anything from you. That’s not why I said hello.”

  “Well, watcha want then?”

  This could go on forever, I feared. I looked across the park at Railroad Street lit up for Christmas, cars covered with mud and snow, Christmas trees tied to their roofs. Even two blocks away, I could smell lunch being prepared at the diner. Roast beef sandwiches, French fries, and gravy. It made my stomach rumble.

  “I said, whatcha want?” Casper demanded.

  “Everything,” I said.

  At the drugstore, I found two umbrellas, dusty and faded, on a shelf near the magazines. One was blue and one was hot pink. I opted for the blue one, trusting that it would open rather than risking bad luck by opening it inside. I did blow the dust off, though, and tried the little plastic strap around my wrist. I wondered if people in Seattle even bothered with umbrellas. I also grabbed a box of Christmas cards and a king-size package of Reese’s cups for Becca. On my way out, I saw the widow, crossing the street, heading toward the Atheneum.

  I watched her walk up the steps, holding the metal railing tightly to keep from slipping. Despite the salt sprinkled everywhere, people were always falling down. I’d come close so many times now, I figured my number would probably come up soon.

  I paid the cashier and went across the street to the library.

  Inside, the fireplace made everything warm. Many of the local transients become avid readers in the winter. Almost every seat in the library was occupied. The computers were all in use. There was even a line at the circulation desk.

  I found the widow in one of the musty rows of books, sitting on the floor reading.

  “Hi, Olivia,” I said.

  She looked up at me, startled, slamming her book shut.

  “Hi … oh, hi … You scared me!” Her hair was disheveled, and her coat was buttoned wrong.

  The book in her hands was one of those paperback self-help books, splashy colors. Letting Go, Moving On or some such thing. She was trying to hide the cover with one of her hands.

  “I’m almost done with your dress. I’d like to have you come over for a fitting before Christmas,” I said. “I might be gone in January.“

  Her face fell; she looked horrified.

  “I mean—” I stumbled. “I may be away for the month of January.”

  “Oh, sure, sure. I can come by next week.” She blushed and her hands fluttered around her lap. “Will you be here for the holidays?”

  I nodded. “Just a quiet Christmas at home.” I tried to smile, but something terrible had passed between us; I could barely look at her anymore. It was like staring my own death in the face: her with her messy hair and her book about letting go.

  I left her sitting there, between the shelves of books, returned to the main room of the library, and found a free computer.

  The slip of paper was in my pocket, folded into the tiny squares as if by a secretive child. I logged on to my e-mail account, clicked on “Compose,” and entered his address. But when I rested my fingers on the keyboard, they wouldn’t move. I had nothing to say. There was no way to articulate more than fifteen years of sorry.

  There are rules to searching. My mother taught me this on the banks of the Pond and at Gormlaith’s grassy shore. If you fail to abide by the rules, you’re liable to find nothing at all. Or the things you find will be lost to you, even while sitting in the palm of your hand.

  Mum was always looking for something. It was her nature to seek. Even when we were only taking a walk or washing the car or shopping for groceries. And because she was always looking past her immediate surroundings, she always seemed slightly dissatisfied. She would never accept that a tree struck by lightning was only a dead tree, that a chrome bumper, forgotten in the woods, was just part of something that used to be a car. The moment she accepted things as they were would be the moment that she started to die.

  I think that must be why she left us. I think that Daddy was starting to make her see that mud was everywhere, and that broken glass was only something that could cut. I blamed him. He was like the person who reveals how a magic trick works. The one who points out the smoke and mirrors, the one who calls attention to what’s hiding inside the magician’s sleeve. After she was gone, everything felt exposed.

  When I realized she wasn’t in the audience that night, I wanted to die. I’d really believed that if only I looked hard enough (across the rows and rows of dull white faces), I’d find her. After the lights went up, and we’d wiped the makeup and cold cream off, after Mr. Hammer had given everyone in the cast an envelope and a single pale flower, I went back on stage and stared out into the bright auditorium, looking for my mother.

  Melissa Ball was in a circle of arms, flowers, and voices. Lucy Applebee and her mother were with an old woman in a wheelchair. Even Howie was inside a circle of tall people, each of them looking more like the last. Becca was backstage; her parents had left right after the show. She was going to ride home with me and Quinn. Quinn was sitting by himself in the front row of the auditorium, waiting.

  I jumped down off the stage and went to him.

  “I didn’t bring flowers,” he said.

  “That’s okay. I got one anyway,” I said, showing him the one from Mr. Hammer.

  “You were so good,” he said; he seemed nervous, shy here.

  “Thanks,” I said, blushing.

  “You were the best one up there.”

  I looked toward the stage, where Becca was talking to Mr. Hammer, looking up at him. She looked like a little girl. For a second, I worried that she might be asking him about me. She kept glancing toward us.

  But then she left him and ran across the stage, jumping down to meet us.

  “What did you think?” she asked Quinn, excited.

  “Awesome,” he said. “You were really good, too.”

  “Not like Piper,” she said, shaking her head. “Can you believe she can sing like that?”

  “Becca,” I said.

  “It’s true. She’s going to be famous someday. I know it.”

  Quinn put his arm around my shoulder and steered me toward the walkway up to the back of the auditorium. “I’m proud of you.”

  Becca followed. And in the warm circle of Quinn’s arm, I forgot all about Mr. Hammer and Blue whom I had seen with a group of friends in the back row of seats. He’d left when he saw me go to Quinn. And when we drove home that night, my eyes still seeing spots from the lights, I thought that I even imagined the expression that had crossed Becca’s face during “Edelweiss.”

  At home, after Quinn had gone to bed, and I had gone to my room to undress, I remembered the envelope inside my coat pocket. I took it out and examined his handwriting for clues. Inside there was a card with the faces of Comedy and Tragedy on the front, embossed silver on black. The poem was handwritten on a piece of paper I recognized as one torn from the notepad he kept near the phone. I read the words until they swam in strange syllables in front of my eyes. And then I read them again. I read them until there was no connection between the words and the world. Until secret meant the same thing as regret, purely because they almost sounded the same.

  My mother taught me that when you are searching, you are bound to create a disturbance. By nature, looking is a disruptive task. Taking a metal spoon and making holes in the mud, cracking the branches of a bush to get at something glimmering in the leaves, loosening floorboards to find a forgotten coffee can.
All of this destroys the order that was there before you went seeking. The first rule is that you must restore the order that preceded you; you must make amends before you leave.

  At my doctor’s appointment two days before Christmas, I read an article about a garden made of glass. It was in an architectural magazine at my oncologist’s office. The photos showed how beer bottles and wine bottles had been transformed from a thousand shades of green and yellow glass into grass. As if things, like words, were mutable. There was an amber path leading to a gate; inside, even the trees were made of broken things. Chrysanthemums and irises, tulips and roses grew impossibly together and never wilted. A cobalt waterfall gave the illusion of movement, but was frozen, still. An indigo pond with glass lily pads and cattails. The artists who grew the garden said that it was most beautiful under moonlight or after rain. This is the way I imagined Seattle. Glistening.

  When no one was looking, I carefully tore the pages out of the magazine and put them in my purse. Becca was absorbed in a New Yorker article about a new Broadway show.

  I knew the moment I saw my doctor’s face what he was going to say. I knew because he’d broken bad news to me before. He has a way of tilting his head when the news is bad, a way of blinking too many times. Becca sat perched, expectant at the edge of the uncomfortable orange chair next to me in the examination room. He stood with his clipboard, like a shield, in front of his chest.

  “They won’t cover it,” he said.

  Becca made a sound like a balloon losing air. A slow, high-pitched cry. I felt everything deflating. I had brought the umbrella home that afternoon, and we’d tried it out in the park, like Gene Kelly. Singing.

  “It’s nearly a hundred thousand dollars for the procedure alone. That doesn’t include the hospital stay. I told you, insurance companies will rarely cover it, at least not completely.”

  Becca said, “But what about those foundations that fund research? Maybe they’d put up the money.”