Starry Night

by Isabel Gillies

  “She was in school?”

  “Yeah, grad school. She’s a shrink now.”

  “Whoa. That’s cool.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, I think we all thought we were all right. It was a big deal that Dad’s job was tenure-track, because it meant that in a few years he could maybe get tenure. Then we would never have to leave, and my mom could take classes easily, and then she could be a shrink there in Pittsburgh.” He was explaining this like he had it down, like he had had a few shrink appointments himself on the topic. “I had two great little girlfriends that lived next door with their mom and—oh yeah! One was Emme! That girl you met tonight? She’s one of my oldest friends. We used to climb this little apple tree in her backyard and eat granola bars up there. Her dad owned Terry’s, the pub where all the college kids go.”

  “Apple trees aren’t really that big, are they?”

  “I know, but we were so small, so…”

  “Oh.” Big smile out of me, I loved thinking about him small. “Does her dad still own the bar?”

  “Totally.”

  “Do you go there when you visit your dad?”

  He nodded. God he was cool. He just was. Nodding is cool, and I thought, even though this doesn’t entirely make sense, if you nod at someone instead of talk, you are connected. Nodding is confident.

  “When did you guys come back to New York?”

  The train stopped at Times Square and about half the people got off. Even close to midnight, tons of people ride the subway in New York, especially the 1 train. A new batch of people got on the train. Some looked tired, like they were heading home. But most looked shiny and energetic, like their nights were just beginning.

  “Only my mom and I came back to New York. It was unexpected because, well, things got screwed up. I am pretty positive that my mother wasn’t planning on ever moving back.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head and bit the side of his lip. “Nope. I remember my mother painting my bedroom there. She let me choose my own color and I chose a Kermit the Frog green. ‘Are you sure?’”—Nolan imitated his mother—“‘Because it’s going to be this color for a long, long time.’ I remember thinking that I would always want my room to be that color.”

  I smiled at him.

  Nolan checked out a guy who had just sat across from us and was taking out fries from a McDonald’s bag. The salty, savory smell that is so distinctly McDonald’s had overtaken the subway car. Most new Yorkers of my generation have been trained to think Mickey D’s is gross because of the documentary that guy made about it, the one where he ate McDonald’s every day for a month and almost died. Nolan looked a tad offended by the guy eating on the train, and I couldn’t figure whether it was because eating on the subway is gross, or that he thought McDonald’s is gross. But secretly, I think Big Macs are freaking delicious. And sometimes, like after a long, exciting night when you didn’t finish your dinner and danced in an unfamiliar part of town with someone who can only really be described as a demigod, the smell of McDonald’s is comforting and makes you ravenous.

  “But then, one night, I heard my parents fighting in the kitchen, which was weird because I never heard them fighting, or saw them fighting. Our house didn’t have a fighting vibe at all, it was more of a pancakes-in-the-morning-reading-Garfield-comics-in-the-afternoon kind of house. Like your house.”

  “Oliver reads a ton of Garfield, or he used to.”

  “Yeah, Garfield is the man.”

  I smiled. “He’s actually a cat.”

  He smiled. “So I had gone downstairs because I had to pee, or I wanted to watch the Food Network with Mom, which sometimes she let me do at night even though I was supposed to be asleep.” He turned to me with his whole body, putting his arm up on the top of the seat, and leaned his cheek against his hand.

  “They definitely didn’t know I was there because my dad wouldn’t have ever said this to my mom if he knew I was there … He said, ‘I love her, and I’m going to be with her, Nolan.’”

  “Wait, he was talking to you?”

  “No, my mom’s name is Nolan too. I’m named after her. Weird, right? It’s actually her maiden name, her real first name is Jessica, but Dad used to call her by her last name when they were dating—it was like his special nickname for her—so.” He shrugged and looked out the window as we came out of the tunnel and into the next station.

  “That’s sweet,” I said. The doors opened to the Fifty-Ninth Street stop. We were only four stops away from when we would have to get off. I felt butterflies in my chest. I didn’t ever want the train ride to end.

  “Anyway, my dad told my mom he was in love with another professor in his department and by the end of that semester, my mom and I were living in New York City in a tiny rental apartment on 145th Street. It was the only neighborhood she could afford, and it was close-ish to Columbia, where she still had friends from when my dad taught there. Eventually she started taking classes again.”

  I was stunned. It was not every day that I heard people talking about being unable to afford to live where they want. It was not every day that I heard about single mothers who were going to have to go it alone without a big fat child-support check every month, like Reagan’s mom. Talking to Nolan made me feel like I had been in a cocoon, wrapped up in the finest silken thread all my life, asleep.

  “I remember having to go to a new school in the middle of the year, which wasn’t so bad, but sometimes I saw my mom crying when she thought I couldn’t see her.”

  “Oh gosh.”

  “No, but here’s how cool my mom is. The first weekend we were in that little apartment, she painted my new room, this little tiny room off the kitchen that had a sink in it, Kermit the Frog green.”

  * * *

  In one day, I was in love. Not that I was fully aware of that then, but looking back, I was. It wasn’t like when people in books and movies say, “I grew to love him.” I was hit by a subway of love.

  Stupidly, I believed that because I was having this big feeling and knew with the greatest certainty that my life had changed, somehow my parents would be able to see that too and understand it, so they couldn’t be mad, because how could you be mad at love?

  * * *

  “Here we are,” I said, looking up at the ivy clinging to the outside of our brownstone. Nolan insisted that he walk me all the way to my door, and I thought that was yet another reason why my parents couldn’t be mad at me. How can you get mad at your daughter for falling in love with someone with such good manners? It was freezing out but I gave him back his jacket. My skin felt like it was being burned by the cold.

  “Wow, it looks really big when you just stand looking at it from the outside. Inside it feels smaller, cozier,” he said, looking up at the five floors of house.

  “I know, it is big, but my parents bought it a long time ago, and…”

  “Hey, no, it’s fine.” He rubbed my arms and pulled me toward him to get me warm. “Your dad works hard. It doesn’t surprise me you live in a nice place,” he said plainly, hugging me. “You better go inside. I don’t want you to get in trouble.” He said it like he didn’t think I was going to get in trouble, so I believed him.

  “Oh, I don’t think I will, I don’t even think it’s midnight.” I looked up at him. “And I spoke to Rachel, right?”

  “Yeah. I’m just going to kiss you quick.”

  The front door flew open at the top of the stairs as my mouth was curling into a waiting-for-a-kiss smile.

  “Are YOU KIDDING ME?”

  Nan screamed that.

  “Wren—get in this house immediately! Right now … right now, RIGHT NOW!” She was repeatedly pointing at the stairs as if she were calling in a naughty dog.

  “Mom, I…” She was at a ten.

  “GET IN THIS HOUSE!”

  Nolan was already walking quickly away up the street, but backward, his eyes on me. He wasn’t running away from the she-wolf at the top of the staircase, but he probably sensed that sticking around
would make things worse for me. The last thing I saw was a look of horror on his face.

  Phone-less, bag-less, and in a now downright filthy dress, I ran up the steps.

  “Get in here,” she hissed, still in her party dress.

  “Mom, I…”

  “Don’t you speak. Don’t you say a word.”

  Oliver and Dad were sitting on the yellow sofa in the bay window. All the downstairs lights were on, even the ones in the dining room. I pictured them coming home and furiously turning on every light, maybe thinking I would be in a dark corner. Oliver looked at me like, I wish I could help you but you screwed yourself, lady.

  I saw my phone and clutch sitting on the table, and—this might have been the worst—neatly folded under them was my mother’s ruby-red cashmere wrap I had also borrowed, and completely forgotten, on the back of my chair at the party.

  “First of all, look at my dress!”

  “Nan, please, let’s keep our eye on the ball here.”

  “It’s ruined, David, look at it! What is on the bottom? Is it wet? What the—?”

  “Nan.” Dad reached up and took my mother’s hand to stop her from waking Dinah and perhaps running to strangle me. She started to cry.

  “Okay, Wren. What were you thinking here?” my father said with crippling austerity. I stood, breathing hard, not knowing at all what to do. I looked at Oliver again. He wasn’t going to make a peep. “We didn’t know where you had gone. You put Rachel in a terrible position. You put Charlie in a terrible position … I am confounded by this.”

  “You ruined your father’s big important night, Wren,” my mother growled through her tears.

  “How is that possible?” I said that softly, but my mother shot a crushing look at me. “I’m sorry, I thought…”

  “I don’t believe you were thinking, not at all, Wren,” my father continued. The room was filled with ungodly silence and tension. “Do you know we were so worried we asked Bennet if he had seen you and he, dear Bennet, had to confess that he had seen you and Nolan in the upper galleries? In the galleries that were off-limits to guests? Bennet was mortified that he had been involved with your shenanigans, and he too didn’t know where you had gone off to, so now he is at home worrying as well.”

  The thought of Bennet worrying made me cry. Had I thought I would upset Bennet, or anyone … well, I wasn’t thinking. And continuing with the not-thinking thing, I chose an iffy line of argument. I should have stayed with the quiet weeping but instead I said, “I told Rachel I would be back before midnight and I am.” My choice of offense over defense wasn’t a strong one.

  “Rachel?” My father was losing his cool.

  “Yes!”

  “Rachel was in charge of Dinah—NOT YOU!” Mom exploded.

  “Someone has to be in charge of me? I am fifteen!”

  “By the grace and generosity of your father, you and your friends were invited to the museum tonight and you took advantage and left without telling anyone. That is hardly evidence of maturity!”

  “Nolan said—”

  “Nolan?” My mother howled. “Oliver, who is this Nolan?”

  “He’s just a new friend. He’s a cool guy. He’s, I don’t know, I think he really enjoyed being at the party, but I guess—”

  When you have made so many wrong turns, something happens to your brain, or to my brain at least, and they start to feel like perfectly good turns, so you keep making them.

  “He is an amazing person!”

  My mother laughed at me. My father put his head down and Oliver stayed quiet for two unending seconds until he too cackled with laughter.

  “Go to bed, Wren,” my father said, sizzling me and my stupid declarations about Nolan’s amazingness into oblivion. “Your mother and I will tell you your punishment tomorrow, but for now, and for the foreseeable future, this phone is no longer yours, and the Internet will be deactivated upstairs.”

  I turned around and headed for the staircase.

  “Take off my dress and leave it in front of our door,” my mother said icily. “And you better get yourself up and ready for school tomorrow and be on time. I don’t want to see you until you are walking out the door.”

  * * *

  In the morning, I thought I heard the front door close from the top of the stairs. It’s a rattling, slamming sound that has a finality to it. My mother leaves the house at 7:25 a.m. with Dinah and walks her to the Hatcher school bus on Columbus, a half block east of our house. (I used to take that same bus, but at the start of seventh grade I was allowed to take the public bus with Reagan and Vati. Farah has always been driven to school by her mother’s driver.) Mom then goes downtown to a yoga class before she goes to her pottery studio. I thought they were gone, but I was wrong. The door closing was Mom coming back from walking May. Dinah was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with her hat, parka, and backpack on.

  “Your ass is grass,” said Dinah.

  “Dinah, you stay out of this,” Mom said, unhooking May and rising up to look at me like an evil queen (in yoga clothes) might look at the waif girl.

  “Wren, this afternoon you come right home. Do you understand me?”

  I nodded.

  “You are grounded from now until we are not quite sure when. You will do nothing but be at school or at home. Absolutely no phone. If you need to use the Internet for your schoolwork you will do it at the kitchen table … none of your friends are welcome to come over.” She paused as if she might be finished, but she wasn’t. “And don’t even think about seeing that boy.”

  24

  When I got to school, Farah careened around the corner as I walked out of the stairwell and onto the fifth floor of Hatcher, where the ninth and tenth grade homerooms are located. Girls were standing in front of their lockers and sitting in groups on the floor, cracking open binders and snapping the rings back together. The stairwell door repeatedly opened and more girls filed into the hallway, screaming hello or quietly making their way to their lockers to prepare for class. In the upper grades students still have to wear a navy-blue pleated uniform skirt, but we are free to choose any top we want as long as it has a collar and is reasonably conservative. Farah and I had both chosen gray turtleneck sweaters. The fierce wind the day before had brought winter to November.

  “I really have to talk to you.” She grabbed my hand and took me over to her locker, which was at the end of the hall where fewer girls were milling around. She turned around and looked right at me. “I know you have something to tell me too.”

  “Yeah, I do, Far. It’s all kind of awful but wonderful.”

  “I have to go first,” she interrupted. She was doing the Farah thing of leading the discussion. “You didn’t respond to any of my texts.”

  “My phone was taken away, but—”

  “Just listen. First, have you seen Padmavati?”

  “No, I just got here.” I pulled my parka sleeve off with my teeth.

  “She’s a wreck.”

  “About Oliver?” I spat the parka sleeve out.

  “Yes. How do you know that?”

  “I live with Oliver, but that is not how I know. Nolan—”

  “Shh shh shh, we will get there, but I have to get through this first.”

  “Okay, but mine is really good! And bad.” I dumped my parka and backpack on the floor.

  “Okay, first, Vati looks like Wednesday Addams. She’s gutted, and Reagan is such a bitch.” She said that in a whisper.

  “What happened?”

  “I will get to all of it, but I have to get to this other thing first.”

  “What?”

  “I went home with—” Oh god, I knew what she was going to say before she said it. My stomach turned into a garlic knot.

  “Cy.”

  “Farah!”

  “Do you think that’s really bad?”

  “Oh god. He’s Cy Dowd. Farah—he’s old! Like really old, and famous and, oh my god.”

  “Wren. Listen to me right now. You can’t tell anyone.�
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  “Have you?”

  “No. And you can’t—at all. Ever.” She pointed her finger at me, the nail still smooth and pearly from the manicure she got for the party.

  I started laughing.

  “Oh my god, stop.”

  I couldn’t. I got the giggles.

  “Wren, what is happening to you?” she said, like an annoyed mother of a seven-year-old boy.

  I leaned against the locker, laughing my ass off.

  “Stop it!”

  I slid down my back against the metal, bumping along the vents and the locks until I hit the cold linoleum floor. I slumped on my backpack and gave into fits of halting laughter. Farah stood above me with her hands on her hips.

  “I chose you to tell, Wren. And you are acting like a chimp.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” It took me a minute to calm down and then I felt sick; suddenly I felt my empty tummy. I definitely hadn’t bothered to stop in the kitchen for a yogurt on my way out the door, which was stupid because I had taken one of my pills, and I definitely should eat something with it.

  “That was a weird response.”

  “Well, what you told me is off the charts, Farah.”

  “I know.” She bent to scratch at a nonexistent stain on her Uggs, anxiously looking down at me. I noticed that her mascara, which is usually impeccable, was smudgy on the corner of her left eye.

  “How did it happen?” I whispered. Girls around us were making moves like classes were about to begin. The last thing I needed was to be late, and I was still in my hat.

  Farah’s eyes filled with tears. She had a moment of looking troubled, like she regretted what she was about to tell me.

  “Well, he smiled at me before dinner, when your dad was talking.” She breathed in and the tears receded.

  “I saw that.”

  “You did?” She smiled, and her eyes got big and perky.

  “Yup.”

  “Well, and then—” She really whispered here. Mrs. Garrison, our homeroom teacher, was in the classroom ten feet away from us with the door open, and she was writing something on the board.