Undressing the Moon Page 19

  Becca made everything beautiful. Everyone brought food and wine and presents. She had gotten a Christmas album with people like Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding singing the standards. She kept trying to get me to sing along, but I couldn’t remember the last time I had used my voice for singing.

  Larry the Lawyer argued with everyone, but in his usual lighthearted way. He’d fight with you about up and down about black and white. He made Boo so red-faced over who won the 1978 NBA Finals, she finally blurted, “Shut up, Larry! Eat your goddamn pie.” Becca and Kit sat next to each other. I kept noticing the way he looked at her, at the way he listened intently to everything she said. I also noticed the pink flush of her cheeks. She couldn’t seem to eat with his eyes on her. She fiddled with her fork, laughed nervously when it flipped onto the floor. Doug and Susan brought a bottle of tequila, after some strange tradition in Doug’s family, and almost everyone drank shots of it after dessert. Lizzie had made us all mittens. She’d just learned how to knit, and some of them were missing thumbs. When we were finished exchanging gifts, Boo and Larry went outside to shoot hoops in my neighbor’s covered driveway.

  Later, after everybody had gone home, Quinn whispered, “I have some news.”

  We were sitting on the couch, eating pumpkin pie with our fingers. Kayla was sitting by the window, sipping tea, and Becca was in the kitchen tying up a trash bag.

  “Stop cleaning, Becca,” Quinn said. “Come in here.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Quinn reached for Kayla’s hand, and I knew.

  “We’re going to have a baby,” he said, smiling broadly.

  Kayla nodded, her eyes growing wet.

  She came to the couch and sat down next to me. I stretched out across her lap, and pressed my ear against her small belly.

  “Are you scared?” I asked.

  “Of what?” she said.

  I realized that this must be why Quinn adores her. She has no fear. She is certain about everything she does: whether she’s at the top of a mountain, her head haloed in clouds, or right here on earth. Quinn watched me listening to her belly, and pressed his hand against my exposed ear. It made it easier this way, to hear what was going on inside her.

  * * *

  Kayla and Quinn left at midnight, and Becca and I were alone for the first time in days.

  “I felt good today,” I said.

  “I could tell. How is your back?” She was cleaning the last batch of dishes, plates sticky with mincemeat and coffee cups.

  “It doesn’t hurt. Not right now, anyway.” I got up and found a dish rag to help her.

  “Did you take your first pill?” she asked.

  “This morning.”

  Becca nodded and handed me a glass, but her hands were soapy, and it slipped from her fingers. The glass shattered, and when she reached quickly into the mess as if to salvage it, a thin river of red stained the soapy water.

  “Come here.” I grabbed her wrist with one hand and turned on the cold water with the other. “Stay right here,” I said, and went to the bathroom to get a Band-Aid.

  When I came out, she was sitting on the couch holding her hand, looking at it with mild disbelief. Her fingers were still wrinkled from the dishwater.

  I helped her put the Band-Aid on and said, “Better?”

  She nodded, but she was still trembling.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. Her lips were quivering, a certain prelude to tears.

  She opened her eyes wide. Her hair was coming out of its ponytail, the shorter pieces in front had escaped, making feathery red wings at the sides of her face.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She looked at her hands and then back at me. “Last night, when I went home, so you could spend some time with Quinn, I didn’t know what to do. I just stood in my kitchen looking around. I must have stood there for a half-hour just trying to figure out what to do next.” She patted the Band-Aid on her finger and looked up at me. “I’m scared, too,” she said. Her hand flew to her mouth, but the words had already come out.

  “You know what?” I asked, smiling.

  “What?”

  “I’m not so scared anymore.”

  These are the kinds of lies I tell now. Lies that save feelings from being hurt. White lies, the opalescent deceptions that spare people pain.

  At school, the aftermath of Mr. Hammer’s sudden departure was worse than that following Charlene Applebee’s accident, more universal. His absence left gaping holes. You could almost see them. You could almost fall into them if you weren’t careful.

  No one ever found out why he left. There were rumors, of course. It was inevitable. I even heard myself passing them along; I knew that breaking the grapevine could be dangerous. A better job offer, a family emergency, an unexpected inheritance— these were the most benign. A mental breakdown, the illness of his lost daughter, a new lover—these were the rumors that stung my lips like bee stings. I felt swollen later, even after the buzz and hum had disappeared.

  The girls who, like Becca, had also loved him speculated endlessly about who the other woman might be. One girl even ventured that Mrs. Applebee wasn’t really dead and that they had run away together. These girls lamented the loss of Mr. Hammer the most. They felt abandoned, betrayed. I nodded when they offered me their unique connections to him: a wink, a kind word, his hand on their shoulder. Becca’s bereavement was silent; it wasn’t as simple or as easy to endure.

  I was aware of other rumors as well. For a time they were overshadowed by the enormity of a teacher’s disappearance, but when people grow tired of speculation (as they always will when nothing or everything is confirmed) they have to find something to replicate the thrill.

  I waited with patience and tenacity, and indeed, soon enough, at the heart of this new rumor was me. But while those residing in the eye of the storm rarely get a glimpse at the chaos around them, I was fully aware of what the whispers and gestures and stolen glances meant. Of course, Jake and Gopher would never tell the story the way it really happened. That would have implicated them in something bigger than themselves, but for a month or so, I was a certified slut.

  I sat behind Jake in English class, staring at the back of his head as I had for the entire school year. I watched every twitch of muscle. Every breath. I thought that if I studied him for long enough I might be able to predict what he would do next. If I understood his gestures, I could save myself from future harm.

  We were reading Great Expectations, and Mr. Ludwig paced back and forth across the classroom reading passages. His favorites were always about Miss Havisham. He became theatrical when he read the dialogue between her and Pip. Today, Gopher had come into class late, when Mr. Ludwig was already well into his performance. He sat down in his chair, squeezing behind the desk, setting his backpack on the floor. Mr. Ludwig raised one eyebrow and continued reading. Jake leaned over and whispered something to Gopher. I watched Gopher respond, curling his lip, coughing into his hand when he started to laugh. My hands tingled.

  Jake sat back up straight in his chair and when Mr. Ludwig was completely absorbed, he turned around to face me. He grinned and slowly stuck his tongue out of his mouth, licking the air in front of his face in slow motion. Then he silently mouthed, I want to lick your pussy. He turned around again and kicked Gopher under his chair. Gopher clucked and chuckled, making Mr. Ludwig look over the top of his glasses for the origin of the noise.

  I stared at the back of Jake’s head, at the tendons and the place where brainstem meets backbone. Watched him and wondered where he might be most vulnerable. I looked at my desk and wondered how a pen, a paperback book, my hands could become a weapon.

  When the bell rang, I lingered in the classroom as long as I could, hoping they would just leave. Finally, I followed behind Gopher who turned around and blocked the door. “Hey, Piper,” he said.

  I tried to duck under his thick arm, but it came down in front of me like the metal arm of a turnstile.

  “What do
you want?” I asked.

  “What do you think I want?”

  “Let me through,” I hissed.

  “Meet me after school,” he said. “I’ll take you for a drive.”

  I could see Jake waiting for him in the hallway. I glanced behind me at Mr. Ludwig, who was sitting at his desk, leafing through some papers. He looked up and caught my panicked glance. I turned back to Gopher, who had also seen Mr. Ludwig and was lowering his arm, letting me through as if he were only a toll booth attendant. As if he were just doing his job.

  This is how my days went. Guys—sometimes I didn’t even know their names—swarmed around me after class, enclosing me in tight cocoons of their bodies and words. Somebody’s hands were always touching the edges of me. Hair. Fingers. Hips.

  At Boo’s house, while Becca looked for dresses that would make her look older, I looked for things that would coincide with how I felt inside. I found a crimson skirt beneath a pile of T-shirts and tank tops. A low-cut blouse that revealed the new curves of my body, the white tops of my new breasts. I pulled the tight skirt over my hips, watched the way secondhand heels made my calves tighten and extend. Becca watched me from behind a rack of dresses. Silently. She must have thought we were still only girls playing dress-up. That we were only pretending still, to be something we weren’t.

  At school, I fought them by giving them what they wanted. When Jake and Gopher trapped me in doorways and in empty rooms, I slithered past them in tight skirts and high heels. I reeked of perfume. I transformed myself into everything they said they wanted. And it terrified them. I tilted my head at their suggestions and answered back, Yes, yes.

  In my bedroom at night, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw everything Jake and Gopher had done to me, fingerprints like smudges of blush, the blue and green eyeshadow of bruises.

  One afternoon, I got a ride back home from school with some boy, some boy who’d been staring at me from across the cafeteria during lunch. He didn’t say a single word to me, he only reached across the seat of his car and opened the door. And even after I slipped inside, we exchanged only glances, not words. I knew who he was (cross-country, Honor Society, all of that) but he had no idea who I was. I was a Pond girl, that was all. A girl without money or class and probably without a brain. But I was a girl in a short red skirt, and I had said yes, without even opening my lipsticked mouth.

  Inside his car, he reached across the seat and rested his hand on my bare thigh. I watched his fingers as if I were only watching a film, indifferent. Parked in the driveway of my house, in broad daylight, I quietly allowed him in, and then I departed. I remembered the way Mr. Hammer had touched my skin so gently it felt like rain instead of skin. How sometimes he was so scared that his hands trembled across me. I remembered the scent of his gentle fingers, the softness of his hair, the music of his breath. By the time Quinn pulled up behind us in the driveway, I was far from this place of wet breath and prying fingers.

  I remember hands. Quinn’s hands, pulling open the driver’s side door, yanking the back of the boy’s collar until his face bloomed red, and he fell onto the gravel driveway. His goodboy khaki pants around his knees, his nakedness repulsive. And then Quinn’s hand curled into a fist, striking the boy’s face until it blossomed the blue of forget-me-nots. The boy’s hands gripping the steering wheel as he peeled out of the driveway, and later Quinn’s hands pulling a blanket around me, stroking the hair out of my eyes, and holding me together.

  “This is enough,” he said. “I don’t want this to happen again. I want you to let it go.”

  What he didn’t know was that it wasn’t the boys’ fault. It was mine. He could never see what was bad in me. That was his inheritance from Mum.

  But I knew what I was capable of. Quinn didn’t know that in exchange for my voice (for hope), I’d destroyed Mr. Hammer’s life. That I’d given him my body as easily as any sort of gift, and when he showed his weakness, his sadness, it made me hate him. Quinn didn’t know that I’d wanted Mr. Hammer’s hands on me, that they made me feel real, alive. Quinn didn’t know that I was nothing like our mother. That I could break things as well as mend them.

  Quinn came over the night after Christmas to say goodbye. He and Kayla had an early morning flight from Burlington to Denver. Becca and I had been playing cards in the living room. Gin rummy, and I was losing.

  “You want to go for a walk?” I said as he was taking off his coat. There were things I wanted to say that I didn’t want Becca to hear.

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s frigid out there, though. Bundle up.”

  I pulled on boots and a sweater. Wrapped a scarf around my neck and found my wool mittens and hat.

  “We’ll be back in a little bit,” I said.

  Becca smiled, looking up from the pad where she’d been meticulously keeping score.

  Quinn held my hand to keep me from slipping on the steps.

  “You look good,” he said.

  I raised my eyebrow at him, pulling my hat down farther over my ears.

  “I mean happy. You look happy.”

  “I’m happy for you,” I said. “About the baby. Everything.” I squeezed his hand. We walked quietly toward the park. “Wanna go to the fountain?”

  He nodded, and we cut across the park to the fountain and sat on the stone edge. The cherub in the center was frozen, holding a cup that spilled nothing but cold winter air.

  “Quinn,” I said. I’d been practicing this since the night before. “Mum’s been writing to me.”

  “She has?” He looked down at his feet, kicked a rock.

  “Well, not exactly writing, but sending me things. Like she used to. I think she’s in New Hampshire somewhere. Close.”

  I shivered, and he put his arm across my shoulders.

  “Are you going to see her?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  Casper’s empty shopping cart was tipped over near a large elm tree. The lights strung in the tree blinked, small heartbeats of light. Quinn looked up at them with me.

  “I didn’t tell you everything,” I said. This was something I hadn’t planned to say. The angel above us held still. Quiet as winter. “About Mr. Hammer and me.”

  Quinn looked at me. Gently. But I couldn’t look back at him. I was ashamed.

  Quinn took his arm off my shoulder and turned to face me, putting his gloved finger under my chin, forcing me to look at him. His eyes were warm. I wanted to crawl inside them, cover myself in the color of them.

  Tears started to blossom in the corners of my eyes.

  “You were a little girl,” he said. “You weren’t even grown yet.”

  I felt my breath rise up, deep, the cold air making my lungs clear.

  “I miss Mum,” I said, tears turning into sobs. My breath strong and certain. “I needed her.”

  The letter from my mother arrived a few days after the new year. Becca separated it from the bills and other nuisances, and offered it to me with my breakfast. “What do you think it is?” she asked, sitting down next to me, looking at the fine blue ink on the envelope.

  “A check for a hundred thousand dollars?” I laughed. Becca’s eyes lit up.

  “Please,” I said.

  “Open it,” she said and grabbed a piece of banana from my bowl.

  I tore it open carefully; the paper was thin. Inside, the words were small and feathery. Please let me see you.

  My hands were shaking as if I’d heard her whisper in my ear. I’d dreamed these whispers for years. Becca touched my arm gently, and I folded the paper back along the creases my mother had made. I put it in the envelope and set it on the coffee table.

  I felt one of the flashes coming on, the ones the medicine made. It was like lightning, followed by tremendous heat. I went to the window and threw it open to the cold afternoon. Becca was trembling and cold behind me.

  Outside, Casper was standing inside the empty fountain, searching for bottles. He kept bending down and standing up again, empty-handed. The heat was enormous; I felt
combustible. I knew I was only moments from bursting into flames. I pressed my forehead against the window and stared down at Casper in his futile task. His shopping cart was laden with imaginary treasures. It would be heavy to push. The flames started in my stomach and licked outward toward my hands and feet, my head.

  “There’s nothing there!” I screamed, the explosion of a burning match touching gasoline. “Stop looking! There isn’t anything there!”

  I felt Becca’s cool fingers on my shoulders, pulling me away from the window, pressing a cool palm to my head, making me sit down and be sane. Afterward, I felt like a pile of blackened ashes. Something as simple as a gust of wind could disassemble me now; a breeze could carry me away.

  She did come back once.

  It was after Mr. Hammer was gone, after he had already disappeared, lingering only as a vague recollection. It was after winter, when almost everything had thawed, the frozen moments in his room in the cottage with the sugarpane windows melted into the colors of a dream. She came in with the warmth and sunshine of genuine spring and left again without saying hello or good-bye. I’m not sure what her reason was; I only knew that she had been in our house.

  If spring here were made of colored glass, this is the way the light would shine through the spring my mother returned. Windows spotted with mud, reflecting the new green of new grass and new leaves. Startling sunshine blinding anything still wearing its winter eyes. Melancholy melting into something like bliss. Springtime, and the whole world was the color of clean.

  Becca had talked me into trying out for the spring play. But this time Mrs. Linwood, the ancient art teacher, would direct the show. It was another musical, Peter Pan, and Becca was already imagining herself suspended, flying. She wanted me to be Wendy. But when I stood on the stage where I had first found my voice, and opened my mouth to sing, it was gone. Lost, I thought. Or stolen. The sound that came out was nothing more than a feeble whine. I hurried off the stage and looked under the seat where my jacket was, as if my voice had just fallen to the floor.