He’s smiling now, nodding. “We saw you at the Tulip Club the other night,” he says.
“Cool.” Luna’s own smile widens. “What did you think?”
“It was awesome.”
“We had a great crowd,” Luna says. “Thanks for coming.” She smiles again like she means it and we pass through the glass door. It closes behind us with the tinkle of bells and I’m thinking, That’s it? It can be that easy, but every time my mother is asked who she is she plays complicated games of pretend and deny.
Luna and I head down to the Promenade to eat our bagels. We sit on a red bench in the shade of a spindly tree and look out over the blue and sparkling river. The Statue of Liberty rises green and spine straight from the water, holding her torch aloft. She’s much tinier than I expected, out there all alone.
Luna holds the perfect circle of half a bagel and points the toes of her left foot. She traces a line on the ground. “What’s Archer’s parents’ place like?” she asks.
“Kind of fancy,” I say. I look across the water so I don’t have to look at Luna. “But his dad is kind of a jerk.”
“Well,” Luna says, “so is ours.” She makes a wide gesture with her arms like she’s in a musical. She’s performing, though no one but me is close enough to hear. This is Luna’s “breezy” act, where nothing matters much and everything is funny, even deadbeat rocker dads.
The wind lifts my hair from my shoulders and drops it back down. I can hear a ship’s horn, a low moaning sound that could be an animal. An elephant, maybe, or a walrus, something with big lungs and a spectacular nose. It’s comforting somehow, that the ship just shouts its warning as it travels. I wish everything in life had a warning sound like that.
Next to me, Luna sighs. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to shut this whole thing down.”
“What?” I snap my gaze toward her, but she’s looking out across the water. Unless she’s been training as a spy—or Archer told her—there’s no way she could have known about my visit to our father.
Luna looks at me. “No Archer.” She shakes her head for emphasis.
“What do you mean?” I ask. I’m so disoriented by my panic that I can’t make sense of what she’s saying. A teenaged girl runs by, chasing a little dog who has slipped its leash, and I turn my head to follow her. Her flip-flops slap against the ground and the dog runs just far enough ahead to stay free.
“Consider him off-limits.” Luna’s voice is firm. “I mean, I know he’s cute, and I love him, but he’s a mess.”
I turn back to her, nearly sighing with relief. This doesn’t have to do with our father at all. “First of all, who said I was interested?”
She looks right at me with eyes as blue green and clear as my mother’s.
We stay quiet for a moment. The buildings on the edge of Manhattan look like a stage set, or someone’s scale model. They’re too perfect, too geometric to be real.
“What kind of mess?”
Luna crushes the foil wrapper in her hand and puts it back in the bag. She extends her legs and looks at her shoes. “The kind that can’t be cleaned up in the next few days.” She takes a breath and lets it out slowly, like she’s demonstrating a meditation technique. Then she looks at me. “Me too,” she says.
I have no idea what she means. “You too what?”
“I’m probably that same kind of mess.” She smiles, but it’s a wavering smile that seems as if it could collapse at any time.
I notice that I’m holding on to the edge of the bench hard enough that I can feel the ridges in the wood. “So maybe I should warn James against you,” I say.
“I don’t think he’d listen,” she says, shaking her head a little.
“So why should I?”
“Because if you don’t,” she says, “I’ll tell Mom. And then you’ll have to hear it from her.” She seems back to normal, sure of herself and certain she’s right. “She’ll jump in the Volvo and be here by dinnertime.”
I could picture it: my mother and Dusty pulling up to Luna’s apartment on Schermerhorn, ready to save me from acquiring a musician boyfriend or whatever. You know, the kind of boyfriends/husbands they’ve both had. Because you’re basically living Mom’s life, I think.
“Well,” I say, “you’d have to talk to her to tell her.”
Luna shrugs. “I’ll send a text.”
There’s a cloud above us in the perfect shape of a turtle, floating like a balloon across the sky. I tip my head back to look at it. “What’s wrong with Archer?” I say. “He seems great.”
Luna nods. “He is great. But he’s had a tough time this year, since his sister left.” She unscrews the cap of her water bottle and takes a sip. “For a while I thought we were going to have to kick him out of the band.”
I know what this is code for. There’s been trouble with booze or drugs or girls or something. But I can’t quite put what she’s saying together with the Archer I’ve known so far, so polite and responsible. “So what happened?”
“Well, we had a big talk. All of us. He stayed with Josh for a few weeks, without going back to his parents’ place.” She presses her lips together, remembering. “He’s been better since then.”
So what’s the problem? I think. “Well, we’re just hanging out.” And, um, texting all spring and summer. I wave my hands in front of my face as if I were brushing away a cloud of gnats. “If I stay with you for every minute of the next few days, we’ll kill each other.” I look at her. “Let me have a friend. He’s really nice.” I can feel my own voice start to tremble. “Things have been so crappy, and yesterday . . . helped.”
Luna reaches out and touches a lock of my hair, just over my shoulder. “Fine,” she says. “Friends. That’s all, though.”
I nod and I smile, starting small but then growing wider. I might as well be crossing my fingers behind my back. I don’t know how Archer feels, but I don’t want to be just friends with him. It feels good, finally, to have a secret that can’t hurt anybody. Maybe one is enough.
So I almost tell Luna then, that we went to see Kieran, and that he wants to record their record. That he seems to miss us, in his own way. But then Luna stands up and walks to the metal railing at the edge of the concrete and pulls herself up on it, standing between the slats on the bottom rung. The sun comes back out from behind a cloud and her hair shines like lava must, when it cools back to black. I squint my eyes and watch her turn to a silhouette against the wide blue sky.
thirty-two
MEG
DECEMBER 1993
I HAD TORN MY TIGHTS, but the wardrobe woman—I thought her name was Julie—wasn’t worried.
“I like them that way,” she said. She was standing with her hip cocked to one side, tilting her head. Her blond hair was dyed purple at its ends, like she’d dipped it in grape juice. “It makes it look like you don’t care. Like everything’s an accident.”
I almost told her that it was an accident, ripping my tights—and that my entire life felt like one too, lately—but Kieran appeared in the doorway in a T-shirt and jeans.
“They’re ready for us,” he said. “Are you dressed?” He looked me up and down. “You look amazing.”
“Thanks,” I said. I’d been too nervous to eat all morning, so I felt light-headed and dreamy, like I was moving though water instead of air. If there were butterflies in my stomach, they were the prehistoric kind, with wingspans three feet wide. I let Kieran take my hand and pull me into the hallway.
“That’s what you’re wearing?” I asked. “Did you even change?”
“What?” he said. “They want me to look normal. I have a natural sense of style, you know.” He twirled me around and leaned me back like a salsa dancer, and he was just about to kiss me when I heard a shriek behind us. It was Julie from wardrobe, again.
“Don’t mess up her lipstick!” she said. Kieran pulled me upright, spun me away from him. He smiled.
“That’s not all I want to mess up,” he said.
It was so
bright in the studio it felt like we’d landed on a different planet, just by walking through the door. Near the back of the room was a huge black backdrop, a moon printed in the middle, shadowy with empty seas. Carter and Dan were already there, staring at the ceiling and wandering back and forth a little. They looked relieved when they saw us.
“We don’t know what to do here,” Carter said.
“You’re doing a good job standing around so far,” I said.
The photographer’s name was Christian, and he barely looked older than I was. He was also wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, so he might as well have been a member of our band.
“There’s a uniform,” I whispered to Dan, “and I’m the only one not wearing it.”
He smiled. “Yeah, where’s your purple hair?” He picked up a flannel shirt from a table just out of the light space. “I’m supposed to put this on.”
The four of us stood close, Kieran and me in the center, Dan and Carter on the sides. The lights shone on us like blazing suns. I could feel myself start to sweat under the long-sleeved black dress Julie had picked out for me.
“Do we smile?” Carter asked.
“No,” said Kieran, at the same time that I said, “They’ll tell us.” He shrugged.
“All right,” Christian said. “Let’s do this. Meg, come up front.”
I glanced at Kieran, who was frowning, then I took a couple of steps toward Christian.
“Two more steps,” he said. He looked toward Kieran. “And guys, why don’t you move to the side, right at the edge of the moon.” He pointed to the backdrop, then whispered to his assistant. She led them to a spot on my left, pushed and pulled them, her hands squarely on their shoulders, until they were standing where she wanted. I couldn’t have reached them even if I had stretched my hand out as far as it would go. But for some reason, that didn’t bother me too much just then.
I could tell that every person in the room was looking at me: the lighting guys, the hairstylist, Wardrobe Julie. The lights didn’t feel uncomfortably hot, just soft and warm, like they were melting me in the nicest way. I smiled and shook my hair out a little. I almost laughed—this was not a shampoo commercial—but Christian seemed to like it.
“You’re a fucking natural,” he said. “Beautiful. Just keep looking at me.”
I did, at first, but then I couldn’t help looking sideways at Kieran. He looked serious, even wary. But when I caught his eye he smiled slightly, barely turning up the corners of his mouth. I couldn’t tell if he meant it.
“Stay serious, guys,” Christian said, and Kieran frowned. I turned back to Christian, opened my lips just slightly, and took a deep breath. He peeked around his camera for a moment, looking at me.
“First girl on the moon,” he said, and then I couldn’t see anything for the flashes.
thirty-three
I TAKE A 4 TRAIN to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall and then I walk underground to the J line. When I get off at Bowery station, I’m pleased with myself. I feel like some kind of subway expert, even though all I did was take two trains without getting lost. I look around for someone to notice, but everyone continues his or her own subway rush, moving up the stairs or down the platform to the open-door train. No one notices.
My mother has been texting on and off all day, and I’ve tried to answer quickly, seem busy. She asked what I’m doing tonight and I told her what I told Luna: that I’m going to see a reading given by a poet I like. It’s true that there’s a reading, and true that I like the poet—we read her in AP English last year—but obviously I’m not going to see it.
I’m wearing my own clothes tonight, dark skinny jeans and a long, gauzy ivory top, but I still don’t feel quite like me. I catch my reflection in the window of a shoe store and I see a pretty girl, hair loose, shoulders straight, layered over the high heels on display behind the glass. I smile and keep going.
At the Ballroom, Archer is waiting outside, leaning against the stone front of the building. A curved window rises two stories high beside him and I look up to see it, all the way to the top. I’ve seen this place only in photographs, when I looked it up after seeing the date on my father’s show schedule. I guess I imagined even then what it would be like to stand here on the sidewalk knowing my father was inside, but now that I’m here, I feel an effervescent anxiety rise through my body. I don’t know how I’m going to make myself go inside.
Archer pulls me into a hug, wrapping me tight in his arms. We press together, hips and shoulders, and I feel the nervousness recede a little like low tide. I feel safe. Then he lets go and looks into my face.
“What did you tell Luna?” he asks.
“I told her I wanted to see Rebecca Hazelton read at McNally Jackson,” I say. Luna took me there the last time I visited, and we saw another writer, a soft-spoken poet whose voice was like music. “It’s on Prince Street. Close.” I can feel my voice turn a little defensive on that last part. I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince that what I’m doing is okay, Archer or myself. “I told her you were coming with me, though,” I say. “I actually kind of wish we could go see Rebecca, too.”
Archer is twirling an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “There’s still time to change your mind,” he says, smiling.
I shake my head and look toward the door. “This is where I have to be,” I say.
Archer nods. “You sure you don’t want to tell Luna where we’re really going?”
“I’m sure,” I say, even though I’m not.
“Okay.” He puts the cigarette back in his pack and we walk toward the door. There’s a guy in a black T-shirt with a clipboard standing in the doorway, next to the short line for people with tickets.
“Phoebe Ferris,” I say. He runs his pen down the list and makes a check. He looks up at Archer, waiting.
“Archer Hughes.”
“Yep,” he says, using his pen again. “You’re here.”
He doesn’t ask me for an ID, which is good, because mine says I’m seventeen. I guess if you’re on the list it doesn’t matter. Archer has a fake ID, he told me yesterday, just in case he needs it.
“You can go up to the balcony,” the guy says, and he hands us each a small badge. “VIP.”
I hold it in my hand and look at it. “Do I have to?” I ask. “Go to the balcony, I mean.”
The guy blinks. “No,” he says. “You can go down on the floor, too.”
I nod. I look at Archer. I’m afraid he’ll be disappointed, but he’s smiling.
“We can always go up later,” he says. “If you want to.”
I already know I won’t want to. I want to watch this show with everyone else. I don’t want anyone to wonder who I am.
I start to walk through the door, then I stop and back up.
“Is there a Luna on the list?” I stand on my tiptoes and try to look without being too obvious about it. I don’t even know why I’m asking this.
His eyes scan the list. “Luna?” he says, still looking.
“Yeah. Can you just look? Luna Ferris.”
“She’s on here.” He glances at the empty space behind me and the sidewalk beyond. “Is she with you?”
“No,” I say. “She’s not coming.” I fall back on my heels, bounce a little. “I mean, I don’t think she’s coming. But leave her on there.”
He looks at me as if I might be crazy, as if he might have to calm me down. He smiles with half his mouth.
“I’m not taking anyone off the list,” he says, lifting one hand, palm facing toward me. “Don’t worry.” And then I see him realize who I must be.
“Are you related to Kieran?” he asks.
My first impulse is to lie, but I’m here and he has my last name on the list in front of him. And part of me wants to claim my father, even if he’s never really claimed me.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m his daughter.”
“He’s a cool dude.” He’s nodding while he says this. “But you must already know that.”
I look at Archer and he smil
es at me. I glance back at the guy.
“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.”
Archer takes my hand, lacing his fingers through mine, and we pass through the door. We walk through the basement and the bar, and then take a set of stairs to the ballroom itself. It’s like a labyrinth. The room beyond has an underwatery glow, and I feel right away that I’m moving through something. The room is full of people with pockets of space in between. The crowd hums low, like the sound power lines make if you’re standing close enough to them. I look at faces as we walk from space to space, toward the stage. There are plenty of people my parents’ age, but just as many who are closer to Archer’s age or mine. Archer is still holding my hand, so when I stop halfway through the room, he stops too. I don’t want to be right in front. He looks at me and smiles. I notice his slightly crooked canine tooth and the curve of his lips. I hold his gaze for a second and then I take out my phone. With both thumbs I type a text to Luna: Don’t be mad. With Archer at Dad’s show at the Bowery. Come see? You’re on the list.
But I don’t send it. I don’t want to find out that she won’t come. I hold the phone up in front of my face, watching the screen glow like a nightlight in this big dim room. Then—even though I know I’m a liar—I delete the message and turn off my phone.
thirty-four
I’VE NEVER SEEN MY FATHER play a show before. Not in real life, anyway. I’ve watched YouTube videos of his shows, I’ve seen him on Austin City Limits, and of course I’ve seen all of Shelter’s music videos. Even the one where they play “Three Days of Rain” on an empty beach in the gray middle of March and if you watch closely, you can see my mother shiver in her long black coat. Behind her, my father leans his foot against his amp, half-sunk in the pearly sand. This year, the week Promise came out, he played on Jimmy Fallon’s show and even sat in the chair next to Jimmy’s desk for a few minutes. They talked about their favorite pizza place in New York, which was apparently the same wood-oven place near the Brooklyn Bridge. I read reviews on Yelp for an hour before I realized I was looking for one signed, Kieran.
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