Girls in the Moon

by Janet McNally

  “You’re late,” he says—I can read his lips from here—but he’s smiling. She’s facing the back of the stage and I can’t hear her reply. Someone switches the Stones off and the last note echoes around the now-quiet room.

  Archer stands with his bass slung over his shoulder, adjusting the tuning pegs. I can hear the low notes, halfway between music and plain old vibration, like the rumble of a far-off train. He sees me and waves.

  I wave back, but I feel a little silly about it. First of all, I’m not that far from him, and second, how are you supposed to wave and not look like Miss America, the Queen of England, or someone’s crazy aunt? Archer motions to me to come up there, and for a moment, I wait. It would be easier to stay here, where nothing bad can happen. Where I’m safe. But then I see his perfect smile and the way he’s walked to the edge of the stage to help me, and safety doesn’t seem like the most attractive option. So I grab his hand and hop up.

  Onstage, a galaxy of lights shine above me, and I tip my face toward them.

  “Want to sing backup?” Archer asks.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I say. I want to do something besides stand there, so I touch the microphone stand gently, running my finger down the metal. Luna opens her case and plugs a cord into her guitar, kneeling down near the edge of the stage. I see now that the soles of her sandals are silver. They don’t even look dirty.

  “Didn’t inherit the voice, huh?” Archer is looking at me, but he’s still moving his fingers, tuning his bass.

  “No,” I say. “I’m not sure what I inherited from our mom. Her neuroses, maybe?”

  I face the room and look out. I can’t see the windows to the street, just the neon signs above them. The few people inside the club now are just shadows moving around.

  “You can’t see much from up here.” I look back at Archer.

  “No,” he says. “I like it better that way.”

  “Really?”

  He shrugs. “I get nervous if I have to make eye contact. So this way I don’t have to spend the whole show staring intently at the Sam Adams sign.” He points at the blue neon sign in the back.

  “Does Luna get nervous?” I ask. I’m still surprised at what happened at the fountain.

  “No,” Archer says. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know what that word means.”

  My mother didn’t either, as far as I can tell from the few live performances I’ve seen. My favorite is from a little theater in Austin, Texas, one of the only times Shelter played that state. There’s a guy at the front of the crowd in a cowboy hat and my mother sings right to him, sitting down on the stage and dangling her legs over the edge. Eventually she puts out her hand and helps him up next to her, still sitting. He’s twenty, maybe, dark-haired and dark-eyed, and he looks embarrassed and completely happy at the same time. My mother looks totally comfortable, her guitar slung behind her back, charming the pants off everyone in the audience. By the end of the song, she’s wearing the guy’s hat.

  Now, Archer leans forward, squinting into the lights. I can see a guy standing in the middle of the nearly empty floor, wearing a dark T-shirt with blue lettering. I can’t read it from up here, but Archer knows what it says.

  “Superchunk.” He smiles and shakes his head. “Looks like I’m buying breakfast.”

  A half hour later, I’m standing next to the bar holding seltzer in a slim cylindrical glass and trying to look busy. The room is full now. I know that Luna and the guys must have friends here, but they’ve been busy setting up and no one has introduced me. I wish again for Tessa. I’d have someone to talk to, and I know she’d love this.

  A Shins song blaring across the giant speakers ends and the room stays quiet. The sound of the crowd talking, which had been up to now a low buzz underneath the music, hushes too. You can’t really make a dramatic entrance in a place without a curtain or a backstage, but when James offers his hand and Luna takes it, stepping up on the stage right at the front where her microphone is, where her guitar waits in its purple stand, something changes in the room. People start to pay attention; they turn toward her like they’re sunflowers and she’s the sun.

  “Hello, New York,” Luna says. Applause starts like rain might, slow and light at first and then heavy, heavier.

  “It’s so lovely to see you again,” she says. “I see you every day, but this is different, isn’t it?” Her voice sounds lower, smokier, but to me she still sounds like Luna.

  “This is nicer,” she continues, both of her hands cradling the microphone in its stand. “And now we’re going to spend a little time together. So settle in. I’m going to tell you some stories.”

  She steps backward and picks up her guitar then, and as soon as she puts the strap over her shoulder and looks back toward Josh, he hits the first beat. James’s guitar and Archer’s bass and Luna’s own guitar follow.

  When she starts singing, I’m surprised as I always am that something so pretty and delicate and strong at the same time can come out of my sister. Not because I don’t expect her to be capable of it, but because she’s mine in some way. She belongs to me, and still, she can do that.

  Luna’s voice is like something golden, like light, filling the space from the scratched wooden floor to the ceiling rafters. Some songs are solid things, but movable, like sand, and others are completely liquid. Each one fills the room in layers. I’ve listened to the Moons’ first record a hundred times, but the songs sound different here, live—ephemeral but resonant and part of this room, all the way to its corners. Right now, Luna belongs not to me but to everyone, and if I didn’t know the music would eventually stop, that Luna and Archer and Josh and James would stop it, I’d be afraid of losing her to it forever.

  She’s not a person up there; she’s a force.

  More than anything, I wish I could be up there too. I want to make something that’s fleeting and impermanent but so real and deep and loud.

  Archer has a small smile on his face the entire time, and he looks toward me half a dozen times during the set. I know what it’s like up there—I know the lights are blinding—but still, it feels like he can see me. It feels like he’s looking right at me.

  nineteen

  AN HOUR AFTER THEIR SET started, I’m standing with my back to the bar, waiting for Luna and the boys to pack up their gear. I didn’t want to hover, so I left the area next to the stage. I’m still holding that glass of seltzer— ice melted, bubbles flat—trying to look like I belong. The Pixies play in the background while I look down and riffle through my bag just for something to do.

  When I look up, Archer is walking my way. When he gets there he leans toward me, puts his mouth near my ear. It feels electric. I swear my blood starts to spin in my veins.

  “Do you want to come outside for a few minutes?” he says. He’s nearly shouting, but still I can barely hear him. I look in Luna’s direction but she’s still up by the stage, talking with James and a girl I don’t know, a tall redhead in a short purple skirt. Luna must be telling a story. I can tell because her hands are fluttering like birds.

  I nod and say, “Sure,” but I don’t try to shout. I’m sure he can only see my lips move, but he turns and walks toward the door anyway. He says something to the bouncer as we pass, and then holds the door open for me.

  Out on the street it’s cooler. We lean against the building so we don’t get in the way of all the people on the sidewalk, walking somewhere. It’s like a parade, this nighttime foot traffic. Back home, you could walk all day on the sidewalks but you’d never run into more than a few people at a time.

  It’s a lot quieter outside the club, and I wait for Archer to say something. I can hear the next band doing a quick sound check, the thumping of a bass drum and a few jangly guitar chords.

  “My ears always ring after we play a show,” Archer says, “even with the earplugs.” He puts his hands over his ears and shakes his head lightly. “Sometimes it’s hard to wait around if someone’s playing afterward. Rude to leave, though.�
� He smiles a little with his mouth closed, and I find myself looking at his lips. I snap my gaze back up to his eyes.

  “Quite the rock star,” I say. “Worrying about rudeness and all.”

  “I’m just the bass player,” he says. “James is the bad boy.”

  I’m surprised to hear him say this. “Really?” I shift my weight to my other hip and feel the scratchy wall of the building through my dress.

  “No,” he says, laughing. “He’s a Boy Scout. Or whatever the British equivalent of a Boy Scout is. A Lad Scout, maybe.” He looks across the street, where a girl in sky-high heels totters out a restaurant’s front door. “If we had a bad boy, I guess it would be Josh, just because he doesn’t give a shit.” He shrugs. “Drummers.”

  I nod knowingly. “My mother always warned me about them.”

  “She did?” He opens his eyes a little wider when he says this, and I notice how long his lashes are.

  I smile. “It sounds like something she’d say.”

  “She’d know, I guess.” He shifts his weight to his shoulder and leans against the wall. “Did she say anything about bassists?”

  I think of my mother’s no-musicians rule again, glowing like another neon sign somewhere at the back of my mind. “I’m sure she’d extend the warning to players of any and all instruments. Clarinet, for example.”

  “Tuba,” Archer says.

  “Xylophone.” I shudder for effect.

  I’m ready to keep going, but he takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

  “Do you mind?” he asks. I’m a little bummed, actually, that he’s a smoker, but out here on the street, it doesn’t seem to matter. I shake my head.

  He flicks a silver lighter and touches the flame to his cigarette. His lips purse. He takes a drag and the end burns orange in a perfect bright circle.

  For a moment, I feel so utterly unlike myself that I wish there were a mirror here so I could check. Am I me? Maybe it’s because I’m wearing Luna’s clothes: I’ve soaked in a little of her energy along with the dress. But a part of me I don’t really recognize wants to touch Archer, the inside of his wrist, maybe, or his earlobe. It occurs to me that I might be a weirdo.

  He exhales and the smoke floats toward the sky. “What was it like, having parents like them?”

  “Oh, fantastic, for sure.” I touch the sole of one foot to the wall behind me. I don’t want to talk about my parents right now.

  He looks at me without saying anything. He’s waiting for me to answer for real.

  “I didn’t really have my dad around much at all,” I say. “I’m sure Luna’s told you that.”

  “Well, yeah, I know she’s mad at him. He wasn’t there when you were small?”

  “We moved to Buffalo when I was two. He stayed here.” I look across the street instead of at Archer, at the windows in the building opposite us. People must live up there behind those square windows, must sleep in those rooms while people out on the street stay awake.

  “We used to see him a few times a year,” I say, “but that just tapered off when I got to high school. I haven’t seen him since I was fourteen and a half.”

  “That half really makes a difference,” Archer says, teasing, but his smile is kind.

  I shrug and look sideways at him. “I think it’s okay to count things by halves,” I say. “I’m seventeen now. Two and a half years sounds better than three.”

  He nods, looking out toward the street. “I can see that.”

  Of course, it’s more like two and three-quarters years if you do the math.

  We’re both quiet for a moment, but it doesn’t feel uncomfortable. It feels perfect with the street lamps shining down on the light-struck sidewalk, the building still faintly warm from the day’s heat.

  It feels like I could stay here all night.

  “Luna’s always so sure about everything,” I say.

  Archer taps his ash over the pavement. “Do you think so?”

  “Don’t you?”

  He shrugs and slides down the wall to sit at the edge of the sidewalk, so I do too.

  “I listened to Shelter all the time in high school,” Archer says. “And when I met Luna, I couldn’t believe that Meg and Kieran were her parents. But she sure doesn’t make it easy. To be fans, I mean. Of them.”

  “She doesn’t make much easy.” I push a loose lock of hair behind my ear.

  A tiny brown dog prances by, attached by her leash to a human, but down here, I really only see the dog. She sniffs Archer’s shoes and then his fingers when he holds them out to her. I touch her silky ear.

  Archer puts the cigarette to his lips again, breathes in. When he exhales, he blows the cloud of smoke away from me. I watch it spiral into the air and disappear.

  “I’m not going to offer you one,” he says, looking back at me. His smile is the slightest bit crooked.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I don’t smoke.”

  “I figured. But I was afraid you might say yes anyway. Luna would be pissed.” He smiles. “We’re taking a big enough risk not telling her we’ve been talking.”

  “Texting,” I say.

  “Right.”

  I shake my head and look away from him. “Everyone’s scared of Luna,” I say.

  “That’s not it,” he says. “I like it. That we have a secret.” He pauses. “That we’re a secret.”

  He’s looking at me, and I feel myself blush. But before I can say anything Archer speaks again.

  “Go easy on Luna,” he says. “You’re her little sister. I know how it is. I have a little sister too.”

  He never mentioned her while we were texting over the summer. Neither of us mentioned our families, which was probably part of what I liked about talking to him.

  “What’s her name?” I ask.

  “Calista,” he says. “And if some guy offered her a cigarette, I’d kick his ass.” He smiles. “She’s only fifteen, though.” He holds up the cigarette and looks at it. The tip still glows orange and smoke curls in a thin line toward the sky. “It’s stupid anyway. Sometimes I think I smoke only so I have something to do with my hands.”

  “And your mouth.” I say this without thinking, and as soon as I realize how it sounds I feel my cheeks warm. But Archer just laughs.

  “Right,” he says, and stands up. “Who knows what I’d do if not for these?” He crushes the cigarette on the building behind him and tosses it into the can next to the club’s door.

  “Coming in?” he says. “I should make sure to see some of the next band.”

  “Such good manners,” I say.

  “I try.” He spreads his hands out in front of him, palms up.

  I look at him. I know you, I want to say, but that wouldn’t be true. I don’t, not really. Not yet.

  “I’ll be in soon. I have to call my mom.” I pause. “That sounds dumb.”

  Archer laughs. “If my mom were Meg Ferris, I’d call her all the time.” He opens the door wide and disappears inside. I feel like someone shut a stereo off in the middle of a really good song.

  I walk out to a lamppost near the street and dial my mother’s number. She answers on the second ring.

  “Phoebe,” she says, instead of hello. She exhales my name like a breath, as if she’s relieved. As if she’s been waiting for me to call since the moment I left.

  “Hi.” It’s strange to hear her voice through the tinny speaker. Just yesterday we were standing out in the backyard, making jokes about kidnappers. “Where are you?”

  “Out back.”

  I picture her sitting where she always does, with a book in her lap, in a beat-up lawn chair crooked in the grass under the crab apple tree. The tree she decides she’ll cut down every fall, when the red pebbles of fruit clog the lawnmower and get smashed on the driveway, drawing bees, who get drunk on the juice. But she reconsiders every spring when the tree bursts into foamy pink bloom.

  I look at the sky, which is charcoal gray, what passes for dark in New York. Tonight it’s cloud-covered and lumi
nescent, glowing right back at the city lights on the ground.

  “Is it dark there?” I ask.

  She laughs. “Fee, we’re in the same state.”

  “I know that. I just wondered . . .” I stop. I don’t even know what I wondered. There’s a flyer taped to the lamppost. LOST, it reads, in wide black type, and at first I think it’s about a pet. MY YOUTH, MY HEART. Where there should be a picture of a cat or a dog is a picture of a woman with long brown hair. IF YOU FIND IT, PLEASE CALL JOELLE.

  Huh. It must be some kind of art project.

  “Where are you?” my mother asks. I look around, as if I’ve forgotten. Three girls are walking down the sidewalk across the street with their arms linked together, laughing.

  “Outside a bar,” I say. “In the Village.”

  She sighs. “Just what every mother of a seventeen-year-old wants to hear. Where exactly?”

  “West Fourth. A few blocks from Washington Square.” I glance back at the sign over the door, glowing soft and pink and neon above me. “The Tulip Club.”

  I try to picture her here, standing on the sidewalk outside or watching near the stage like I was when Luna was singing. I can’t quite make her fit, even in my imagination.

  “Luna and the guys just finished playing,” I say.

  I hear Dusty in the background, one quick bark like a warning.

  “How were they?” my mother asks.

  “They were great, Mom.” A girl wearing a long striped maxi dress walks by and smiles down at me, her skirt fluttering around her ankles. I smile back. I could be anyone, any New York girl, standing on this sidewalk. I might not be Phoebe Ferris at all. “Really. Luna’s voice sounds amazing.”

  “I’m sure it does,” my mother says, and I can almost see her nodding as she says it. “Luna is better than I ever was.”

  Then why are you so mad about it? I want to ask. But instead I say, “You were great too.” I say it like I mean it—I do mean it—but I’m not sure how to make her believe it. And I don’t know why that seems so important to me in the first place.