I spy my dad in the corner, already holding a coffee and a pastry in front of him. He’s a handsome guy in his early sixties, with a full head of hair and square shoulders. He stays trim playing racquetball twice a week and still does fifty push-ups and sit-ups every morning. It has paid off, because he’s married to a woman almost thirty years his junior who has given him a pair of honestly adorable little boys.
He glances at his watch and peers out the window, looking impatient, and I rush over. “Hey, Dad. I’ll just get a coffee and be right back.”
“I got one for you.” He pushes the paper cup over the table, as well as the pastry.
“Oh.” I push the pastry back. I can smell it, sugary and yeasty, with cherries shining in the center. My mouth waters. “I can’t eat those anymore.”
“Still off gluten, huh? You don’t need to lose weight.”
I take a breath to calm my irritation. His casual criticisms are annoying, but I’m used to them. “It’s not about weight. I’m a celiac. I’m allergic.”
He lifts an eyebrow and pulls the danish back to himself. “It’s still weird that happened, just out of the blue. You loved doughnuts and bread and pasta as a kid. I worried that you’d grow up and get fat.”
He takes a bite, and I can hear him chewing it, a horrifying set of mouth noises, squishing and soft smacks, that practically brings tears to my eyes. It isn’t that he is a rude eater, just that I can’t stand mouth noises of any kind. I press the button on the earphone in my right ear, and Tupac comes on, just loud enough to drown the sounds.
“How’s it going, Dad?” I ask, sipping the coffee. This is right. Milky and sweet and strong, just the way I like it.
“Good, good. Britt just sold a penthouse in Tribeca, so we’re going to take a little jaunt to Italy over Christmas.”
“Nice. And the boys?” My half brothers are sweet kids, and they worship me in a way that’s wildly satisfying. We don’t spend much time together, but I make it over for most birthdays, for holidays and the odd party.
“Great. Nathan is reading at a sixth-grade level—did I tell you that? Five grades above his age. Some of his teachers think he should skip, but that was hard on you, wasn’t it?”
I nod, ducking my head. Grade school was not the easiest time. I was skinny and too tall, even two grades up, and I had food allergies even then, to eggs and shellfish and, weirdly, melons of many kinds. Which my dad figured out through an elimination diet. My mom could never really get with the program to stick with the four-day testing periods. “It’s hard to be the smart kid no matter what, but it’s easier if you’re a boy.”
He focuses intently on my face. It’s one of his gifts and has made him famous for a certain kind of in-depth, revealing interview that gets at the heart of a person. It was how he met my mother, an interview for the Village Voice. The first big piece for both of them: Billie Thorne, the up-and-coming punk star, and Robert Janssen, the rising journalist. “I guess it would be. If you were Nathan’s mom, what would you do to make it better for him?”
Of course he’s not interested in me particularly. This is for his child, the one he won’t leave the way he left me. But I’m willing to indulge some give-and-take. I take a breath. “Maybe don’t make too much of it; let him just have a lot of interests and be a normal kid.”
“But he’s not.”
“I know, Dad. He has a ridiculous IQ. But it’s not going anywhere. He’ll always have that brain. Let him be a kid.”
“That sounds like we didn’t let you be a kid, and I think we tried hard to make life feel as normal as possible for you.”
“You did. I know you did.” I feel the same creeping shame I always do when I’m with him, that sense of not appreciating enough what has been done for me. The lengths he went to. A little burn is starting in my gut. I duck behind the same story I always do. “Not everybody is the kid of a rock star.”
“Yeah.” He leans back, the pastry evidently forgotten, thank God. Looks at his watch again. “So what’s up, Zelda?” It’s his nickname for me, for one of the games I loved madly as a kid. It’s one of the things he does to endear himself to people, give them nicknames, and even though I know that, I feel seen.
Until he follows with, “I have brunch in half an hour.”
I press my lips together. Maybe this was a bad idea, but I’m running out of possibilities. Baldly, I say, “My business is in trouble, and to avoid having to sell to a competitor, I need to raise some money to give me time to finish a game.”
He waits to see if there’s more, but I can’t come up with anything else.
“It’s not the best time,” he says. “Even though I just said we were going to do this little trip, that’s Britt’s money, not mine, and we just paid tuition for the boys, and—”
I raise my hands, palms out, to stop him. “Never mind, Dad. It doesn’t matter.”
“Why don’t you sell that apartment of your mother’s? I’m sure Britt would give you a very good deal on the fees, and even in the state it’s in, you’ll bring in a fortune.”
This again. He aches for the commission his wife would earn from the sale of the apartment, but I also think he longs for the place on some other level. Maybe because he was happy there once upon a time, or maybe it’s just the New Yorker’s longing for that elusive perfect apartment.
It’s annoying but irrelevant to the discussion at the moment. “I don’t need millions. I just need a short-term bridge to keep the business afloat for a few months, until I can get a new game out in the world.”
He gives me a regretful expression. “Wish I could help. But seriously, think about the apartment.”
Did I really expect him to help me? Even though he has a history of not really showing up unless it works out for him? “Gloria lives there. And so does Willow at the moment, even though I know you don’t care.”
“I have no feelings about her one way or the other.”
A gigantic lie, even all these years later. He adored my mother, worshipped the ground she walked on. The happiest years of my life were before the age of four, when my parents curled up together with me, when we took walks in the park and sailed paper boats at the ponds. When I was four, my mother gave birth to a beautiful blonde baby with a sunny disposition, a baby that was not her husband’s.
“Whatever. Doesn’t matter.” I stand and shove my arms into my rain jacket and pull on my hat. Maybe I think he’ll feel bad and offer something else, but of course he doesn’t. “Thanks for the coffee.”
I head out into the drizzle once more.
Water splashes down from the brim of my hat to my face, momentarily blurring the world. I’m getting a headache and rub my fingertips against my forehead, trying to ease the muscles.
Sell the apartment.
A part of me aches at the possibility of it being out of our hands. I mean, it’s a fantastic place, even if I personally find it heavy and dark and overwhelmingly in need of updates.
Another part of me wonders, What if? My share of the money would be plenty to pay salaries and rent until we can get a new game out in the world, and I wouldn’t have to sell my soul to Jared.
Would Willow be willing to listen? Could Gloria be enticed by the possibility of some sleek, modern place where things aren’t constantly in need of repair?
The greenhouse, rioting with color and scent and humid possibility, runs over my imagination. My aunt created that oasis. She won’t leave it.
But—the thought is traitorous but distinct—it doesn’t belong to her. It belongs to me and Willow, the legacy our mother left us, supported by royalties from her music. Gloria has no legal claim at all.
Except the very simple reality that G gave up everything—her career and a life of adventure—to come back to New York and take care of us after my mother died.
That little detail.
As for Willow, she flutters in and out between gigs, between relationships. Willow of the flowing golden curls. Willow of the delicate wrists. Willow of the mil
lion talents, who is wasting her life on chasing dreams that have constantly eluded her.
My sister drives me crazy. She drifts along like dandelion fluff, letting people take care of her. She makes terrible choices: the wrong jobs, the wrong men, the wrong apartments, everything. She’s like the manic pixie dream girl on steroids, all light and sparkling charm and sweet sexiness wrapped up in disaster. Even her name. Willow Rose. A delicate little flower of a person, in need of love and protection and champions.
I mean, I love her. She seriously is a wildly talented musician, which plays nicely into that MPDG thing in the worst (best?) way. How could any man not fall in love with all that pretty hair and a voice like something that fell out of heaven and her energetic fiddling, which sometimes makes the world just turn colors, like flames that come right off the strings and drift around lighting fires in everyone listening?
And oh my God, can she cook! I have never known anyone to think so little about what to cook and just make these amazing things. It was a miracle when we were kids and our mother didn’t want us to get fat, so she starved us. That sounds like an exaggeration, but it isn’t. We were hungry all the time, and Willow could rustle up a half stick of butter with some spices and milk and a snap of her fingers to make a soup that sang. I wish I could cook like that, but I’m a city woman, born and raised. My fridge is filled with take-out containers.
I love her, and I get it—she was damaged too. But I also think it’s time for her to drop the manic pixie thing and get on with her life. She’s thirty-five. That’s not going to play forever, and then what will she do?
Maybe it would be good for her to live somewhere else besides the apartment, to leave behind our ghosts and start fresh. There would be plenty of money for all of us, including Gloria.
At the corner, getting soaked, I’m indecisive. Should I head down there to talk to them about this, or maybe just say hello? I told Gloria I would come by while Willow was here. As one does.
I let the light change, looking first to the north and Harlem and the space I’ve created for myself, then west to the hospital, where my ex works. Sometimes, even now, I run by there. Just in case.
In case of what? I hear my therapist ask in a weary voice. In case he walks out of the hospital and falls instantly in love with you? Sam, that’s akin to emotional cutting, wouldn’t you say?
It was such a good line I fed it to the AI app, and at this moment, it brings into focus the hollow, pounding ache in my gut. For some reason, I go back to Eric, over and over, venting my sense of loss and grief over the other things in my life on him. If I do the emotional cutting there, with the man I thought I was going to marry, then I don’t have to feel the pain over my dad. Or Asher. Or my mother, my therapist says, but I think that’s overstepping.
I really didn’t have much luck with the males of the species before Eric. I’m too strange and too weird looking for most guys, but I met Eric at a race, a virologist who loved the fact that I could outrun him easily and bragged to all his brainy friends about my brains.
For my part, I was completely dazzled that this gorgeous Viking of a man fell for me. We were together four years, and I really believed we’d get married. Instead, after a trip to Vietnam, a trip I thought was really deep and beautiful, he left me and joined Doctors without Borders to go study Ebola and other terrible diseases.
That was almost three years ago. I was completely insane for a solid year. The kind of crazy girlfriend who makes a movie painful and funny and awful. I hate remembering it.
Not today.
I take a breath, pull out my phone—still eyeing the northward path to home—and punch the simple drawing that marks the AI I’ve been working on for over a year. “Hey, Suzanne,” I say. “Do I run west by the hospital or south to visit my aunt?”
“Which one will make you feel better at dinnertime tonight?” she asks. Her voice is middle aged, a little bit deep, with highly educated undertones. It took months to find just the right sound, but this is really it. She always makes me feel calmer.
But she’s never asked me this particular question, which is a success from a programmer’s point of view. To keep her learning, I reply, “Good question.”
“Thanks. What’s the answer?”
“Definitely better to go see my aunt.”
“Do that, then.”
Chapter Seven
Willow
I’m in the kitchen, huddled over a bowl of deli tomato soup, when Samantha arrives. I have spent thousands of happy hours at the small table, eating whatever Gloria imported or had delivered, or practicing violin, or chopping herbs for my experiments. No one in the family likes to cook except me, and they think it an odd manifestation, like an extra toe or double-jointedness.
I’m enjoying the soup, which is deep tomato with hints of basil, thickly pureed with plenty of onion and garlic and some spice I can’t quite name that gives it an exotic undernote. Sumac, maybe? Lime? Not sure.
When my sister bursts into the room, I find my shoulders tensing instantly.
“So you’re here.”
Sam is four years my senior and a full seven inches taller and carries the will and presence of a hurricane. Also, she has resented me since the day I was born, and nothing I’ve done since has done much to change her mind.
She’s wearing her running gear, which shows off her skinny, long legs and broad shoulders. Her thick hair, the richest color of cinnamon, is pulled back in a short, messy ponytail. She looks pale, even for her.
I love her more than I am able to express, with no justification whatsoever, the curse of a younger sister. Long, long ago, in the days before my mother died, she could be completely magical, creating entire worlds for us to play in with our stuffed animals and dolls. Her attention turned on and off, but it was on often enough that I was trained to adore her. “Hi to you too, Sam. Gloria needs a house sitter.”
She raises a brow. “Nothing to do with the flop of the album, huh?”
“Wow.” I shake my head. “Couldn’t you just say hi and leave my shaming for five minutes?”
She shrugs. “I’m not shaming you. It’s just an observation.”
I press my lips together, and to my utter fury, tears sting my eyelids. I could say that she didn’t pick a reliable career, either, but I can’t trust my voice, and honestly, she’s been successful. Wearily, I say, “Not all of us are superstars at twenty.”
“Mom was twenty-three.”
I look at her. “I was talking about you.”
She glances away, out toward the river. “Whatever. I’m sure you’ll find a guy to rescue you soon enough.”
I shake my head, defenses crumbling. Is she right? Is that how I live? From guy to guy? I definitely leaped when David dangled a record contract in front of me, but—
Stop. I’m not going to let her do this to me. “I really don’t need your bitchiness, Sam.”
“Where’s Gloria?”
“In her bedroom, I think. Please go find her.”
She pauses. “I was only kidding, Willow.”
I sigh. “That’s what people always say. It’s really quite passive aggressive.”
“Whatever.”
As fast as she came, she whirls away, her feet creating busy noise even in running shoes. You’d think a runner would be light on her feet, but Sam sounds like a moose stomping over the wooden floors.
I ladle a spoonful of soup, which I automatically eat very carefully, even if Sam isn’t in the room. She has a condition that makes it painful to hear people eat. I feel six years old, trying not to mind her sharpness, wishing she’d get the fuck over it already. I had no control over the adults who made me, nor did I have any over the father who deserted her when he’d found out his wife was cheating on him.
Shocking that a rock musician, on the road half the year, would cheat. I know I’m astonished.
The mental sarcasm is unbecoming and not accurate. I know lots of musicians in committed, long-term relationships. My mother, however, was ne
ver one to skip a delicious morsel just because there was cake at home.
I stare out the window at the drizzly day, feeling lonely. I should get in touch with some of my local friends. I pick up my phone and scroll through my email out of habit. Almost nothing is there, except one message.
My heart sinks.
The sender is Music Holidays around the World, and the header reads, Great fit!
Of course. In desperation two weeks ago, I applied at the travel company to see if I could at least get some travel out of the gig. A friend from Ren Faire days had sent me the link and recommended the people highly. She’d made good money with them but had met someone and was settling into a suburban life in Maine somewhere now, and she’d told them about me.
My thumb hovers over the email, and then I punch it quickly before I can chicken out.
Dear Willow,
I was so very pleased to receive your resume. I have several trips coming up for which you’d be a great fit, and I’d love to talk to you as soon as possible. Your main duties are not onerous, involving 1-2 classes per day to vigorous older adults with a passion for music, leaving you plenty of time for exploration on your own or with others in the group. The pay is competitive.
Please let me know when we might be able to talk.
Sincerely,
Marta Platten
PS The samples you included from your album were so wonderful I ordered the CD immediately.
Tears sting my eyes, and I shut the email app instantly, looking up to ease the emotion. I was feeling lost and desperate when I sent the application, but maybe if I get my feet under me here in the city, I won’t have to take what essentially is a tour guide job.
Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that I have always believed, all the way to my bones, that I was meant for something else.
All the more reason to double down on the competition.
Meanwhile, I need to get out of my head. Most of my friends here are also musicians or actors, people I met in high school at LaGuardia School of the Arts. A couple of them have made the big time—a dancer who has done well on Broadway, and an actor with a name so famous I try never to drop it, even though we were part of the same little group.
Write My Name Across the Sky Page 4
