Starry Night

by Isabel Gillies

  “I think I am going to look for another art program in New York for next year,” I said, and held my breath.

  She put her hand to her chest like she was having a heart attack.

  “You didn’t complete or hand in your application.” She blinked hard four or five times. “I think I might faint, Wren.”

  I didn’t think she was kidding.

  “I’m sorry, I thought about this a lot.” Had I? I wondered. Was I impulsive? Had I been thoughtless?

  “When you say ‘a lot,’ how does that amount of time compare with the amount of time we have been thinking and preparing for you to apply to Saint-Rémy?”

  “Well, it doesn’t. But I did think about it.”

  She looked crestfallen. “And you think there might be something in New York?”

  “Maybe?”

  “There is not.”

  “How do you know?” I did not mean to sound like I was giving her lip there, but I think she thought I was.

  “Because I know with full certainty that there isn’t.” She looked down at a paper on her desk like she was done with me, and then she changed her mind and wasn’t done with me.

  “I am so disappointed, Wren.” And then she literally howled. I knew not to speak, but I did peer through the leaves of the palm to see if the girls who were in the studio finishing up their projects noticed that Mrs. Rousseau was freaking out. They did, but they looked down as soon as our eyes met. “I am so distraught.” She threw her hands in the air and set them down on her desk as if she might get up. “And confused.” She waited to collect herself. “Do you know I went to study at that very program, oh, forty-some years ago?”

  “No—you never told me that,” I said, and picked up her nice pen to fiddle the anxiety out of my body.

  “I did. I did and I loved it. I learned everything I know about light in that school, and not because someone told me about it, no. Because I could see it and feel it and study it, because I was there! The light moves differently there. It is unexpected, it tricks you, there is an ethereal quality to it, and it mesmerizes you. It’s challenging. It will teach you and you won’t find it in your bedroom at home or in the goddamned studio at the Art Students League!” Her voice had lowered to a shame-inducing whisper.

  “I’m sorry.” I was sorry.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry unless you are, Wren. You have everything at your fingertips and you chose to turn your back on it, for what? Fear? Laziness? I don’t comprehend it.”

  “I am not turning my back on art! Gosh.” Tears came to my eyes.

  “What happened, Wren?”

  “I just want to stay here. I want to make art here. I want to make art in New York.” She looked at me funny, like she knew I wasn’t telling her the truth, and I wasn’t. I wanted to stay because Nolan had asked me to. It had nothing to do with art at all.

  51

  That afternoon when I got home from school, I felt like I was getting a rash from shame about Saint-Rémy. I was also getting texts from Nolan saying he couldn’t wait to see me at Cy’s party. My confusion felt tangible, like a Rubik’s Cube I couldn’t solve. I bet Romeo and Juliet felt like they were doing the wrong thing too when they ran away into the woods to get married by the friar, but they did it. Okay, they died in the end, and it’s a fictional story, but the point is, they still left the safety of what they knew and charged into the woods—for love.

  The other thing that was bugging me like crazy was Reagan. Was Charlie right? Was she going to Nolan’s shows and not telling me? But maybe that’s not such a big deal? I was looking at my phone every two seconds, and just as I was planning on texting Vati to see what she thought about it, my phone rang. The picture of me and Reagan we had taken in my room that day when she said I looked pretty filled up the screen and suddenly she was on the phone.

  “Hi!” she said, her voice friendly, friendly, friendly.

  “Hi,” I said warily. I went and sat on the top of the stairs on my floor. It was getting dark out already even though it was only four o’clock.

  “Oh my god, I have been wanting to talk to you desperately,” she said. “Nolan told me the whole plan for tonight.”

  “Wait—what do you mean?” I said, reaching up and peeling off some blue tape that was holding one of my owl drawings onto the wall.

  “I mean the other night when I saw him at his gig, we talked about ambushing Farah.”

  “Do you go to all his gigs?” I said, trying to restick the blue tape on the wall because the drawing was starting to fall down.

  “Yeah,” she said point-blank.

  “Oh,” I said. The drawing fell.

  “What? That’s weird?”

  “Well, I’m never allowed to go out that late, so I don’t even think to ask my parents. And you didn’t even tell me you were going, so that is a little weird, right?” Even though I think I’m nonconfrontational, impulsivity sometimes feels confrontational. Having ADD can feel like having a truth serum constantly coursing through your veins.

  “Oh, you know, my mom doesn’t care what I do,” she said in a nondefensive tone. “And I am so into the bass player of Shoppe Boys—this guy Aaron. Did Vati tell you?”

  “No,” I said, now looking at the owl I must have drawn two years before and thinking it needed improvements.

  “Didn’t Nolan tell you?” she asked.

  “No, nobody told me that you are into the bass player. Charlie said you are always there at the gigs, and honestly it made me feel weird because, well, it’s weird that you see Nolan more than I do.” I stood up holding the drawing, went into my room, and got a purple colored pencil. I sat on the floor and started working on the shape of the owl’s eyes.

  “What is weird is Charlie telling you anything, because he’s never there.”

  “His guitar teacher sees you,” I said and stopped coloring.

  “Well, I don’t even see Nolan, not really, he’s playing and singing and doing his whole band thing.” Gosh, I thought, I don’t really know what that is.

  “I don’t even talk to Aaron, I just watch him!” I had seen pictures of Aaron on the Shoppe Boys website. He looked like Jaden Smith.

  “Well, I’m going to go to a gig during break,” I said, putting the phone on speaker and setting it next to the drawing.

  “Yeah totally, we’ll go together! My mom’s not taking me anywhere this Christmas.” Her voice echoed out of the tiny phone speaker.

  “Okay,” I said, feeling a little better about Reagan, and about the owl.

  “Word,” she said, and sounded like she was going to get off, but she didn’t.

  “So, have you and Nolan slept together again?”

  I looked down at the phone. The selfie of us was still lit up. “Oh, no—we haven’t,” I said, taking the phone off speaker and putting to my ear.

  “Really?”

  I had an overwhelming urge to throw my phone out the window. “No,” I said. “But I don’t know, isn’t that something you do like once a month?”

  “Once a month? Did you just say once a month?” I swear I heard her laugh. Then she said, “I don’t think you put a number on it—usually it just happens naturally—but more than once a month, I’m pretty sure.”

  I had been treasuring the one and only time Nolan and I had had sex and wondering when it would happen again, but I wasn’t worried about it. In fact if it took more than a month for us to do it again that would have been all right with me. I would be happy with just kissing.

  “It’s all right,” she said.

  “Reag—I didn’t send in my application to that program in France because Nolan asked me not to.”

  “So?” she said.

  “So? I don’t know, everyone is pretty shocked by it and I’m a little freaked. I mean, I feel so happy about Nolan, but it was kind of a big deal of him to ask me, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah—sure it is. But, Wrenny, do you think one program in France is going to change your life if you do it or not?”

  “
My parents are hardly speaking to me, Oliver thinks I’m whack, and Mrs. Rousseau thinks I’m an idiot,” I said, and pushed the drawing away from me.

  “Mrs. Rousseau is an old bat. I know you love her, but please. She’s like a hundred years old.”

  “I think she’s in her sixties.”

  “Whatever. Follow your heart, Wren.”

  Yeah—yeah, I thought. Follow your heart. That is a tried and true solid theory about how to go along in life. Grownups are always telling you to follow your heart. My mother must have said it to me a million times. Follow your heart; it will lead you to the right place.

  52

  “So when we get there, just stay with me. Okay, Charlie? Vats? Reagan? You?” Nolan squeezed my hips with his hands and tugged me more up on his lap. We were all shoved into the number 2 subway train careening downtown to Brooklyn. (Sitting on Nolan’s lap was giving me a feeling that maybe I wanted to have sex more than once a month, but we were on a mission, so I ignored it as much as I could.) “Oliver and I will deal with whoever is at the door. Just look like you know where you are going and like you are supposed to be there.” He held my hand. “Obviously there will be underage people around, he doesn’t seem to have a problem with that.”

  “Wrenny, I think you and Vati and Reagan should find Farah right away, and I don’t know, just see what you vibe,” Nolan said. We pulled into the Fourteenth Street station. This is a stop near New York University and it’s in the middle of the West Village. Seeing people way cooler than me in their granny boots and ironic eyewear ease onto the train as it headed even deeper into the land of coolness forced a rush of adrenaline up my spine. I did regret that I hadn’t piled on more bracelets, like the girl who stood in front of me had, and I thought that maybe it was time to purchase a fedora, but I did have on a very wrappy gray scarf that put me in the game. Nolan was wearing a similar scarf in a dark army green. Truth be told, I had copied him. If I could have worn all his clothes, I would have. Rattling along on that train, I had a small fantasy that maybe the next fall, since I was going to be in New York, we would wear the same clothes—all the time. He would leave a sweater at my house and I would wear it to school—maybe he would wear the very scarf I was wearing! Maybe he would wear it to gigs. Sadly, I think we could even wear the same jeans. Anyway, soon we would look like those couples, like Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux, or Gwen Stefani and Gavin What’s-his-name, couples who dress out of the same closet, or look like they do. We would grow more and more alike and people would say, “Wren and Nolan are two peas in a pod, it’s so cute.” Maybe one day my art would be used on his album covers and websites. We could work on movies together; he could direct and I could do the art direction. We could move to California!

  “What if we are blowing this up and it’s nothing and she’s just hanging out with him? Are we going a little Homeland Security on her?” said Reagan.

  “Reagan, what? No, no. Farah usually knows what she is doing, but I absolutely think this time she is in the weeds.” That is a restaurant term for being in trouble. Charlie tosses in things that waiters and line cooks say now and again because he grew up in a catering kitchen.

  “I just want to get her, get the hell out of that place, get back on this train and go to a coffee shop on the Upper West Side where we all belong,” Charlie said, almost pouting.

  “I am not a fighting man, but I feel like I want to sock that guy,” Oliver said, with one arm draped around his girl Vati and the other making its way into a fist. Vati snuggled closer into him and pushed his dreads out of the way so they wouldn’t poke her in the eye.

  “Bring it, babe!” Vati said. Babe? Who calls anyone “babe”? Just so you know, those two are still together. I have a feeling they always will be.

  53

  Oh my goodness, you should have seen this place. First of all it was way the heck out in Brooklyn. We had to walk for fifteen minutes from the Junius Street station until we got to the deserted strip where Cy Dowd had his den. This was not The Cosby Show. This was not BAM or the Brooklyn Museum of Art or the hip streets with organic ice cream shops and knitting stores. No, this place felt as if we had walked to the end of the earth, or at least to the end of Brooklyn.

  It wasn’t hard to get into the party. You would think from what we were seeing on the Internet that it would be like getting into Buckingham Palace, but there wasn’t even a bouncer. We all just walked right through the banged-up door and climbed the narrow staircase. The steps were wooden, like we were in a factory from the 1800s, but in contrast to that ancient feeling there was also a black light that made anything white that we were wearing glow. The thumping of the music from the party closely mimicked my pounding heart.

  Inside, the party felt like what I had imagined Andy Warhol’s factory was like. The electronic music penetrated everything. It was overwhelmingly loud and unfamiliar, but you could tell it was coming out of expensive speakers. Well, Nolan told me that.

  “This place is sick. Those are Grand Utopia EM speakers. They’re like $200,000. Who the freak is this guy?” Nolan took my hand protectively as we made our way into the gigantic room.

  “This is wild, I mean, we should get her, but it’s kind of cool.” Charlie was moving to the music and looked like he would stay if we were not on a mission.

  “I think this is scary. I can’t believe she’s even in here.” It did not feel like the night when Nolan took me to see Mikey. That felt like a dancing bunch of kids where I belonged, even if I was in that huge red dress. (The dress, thankfully, was successfully cleaned, but I don’t think I will be wearing it again anytime soon. When it came back from the cleaners, Mom held it up for me to see, lifted her eyebrows and the cleaning bill, and said, “Eighty-seven dollars!” and pointedly took the dress upstairs, away from me and my wrongdoing.) This gathering of, let’s face it, adults, felt like we had entered another stage of life that we weren’t supposed to see yet. It was a vibe more than anything. Like, have you ever been to a party where you think you will know everyone, but then there are some kids from another school there, and maybe they are in a higher grade? Just those five or six older kids can make you question what you are wearing, your place in the universe, and possibly relegate you into a huddle in the corner with the people you do know, because the unfamiliarity feels chancy and awkward. Cy’s party was that feeling times one thousand. Plus it was dark, plus people were drinking cocktails, plus people were smoking, plus some men had goatees. It was just wrong, as Dinah would say.

  “I’m going to go to the back, it looks like there are some more rooms that way. Do you see Cy?” asked Nolan. I was standing next to cool-as-a-cucumber Reagan, and even she was flipping her hair repeatedly, revealing insecurity.

  “No. But I think I just saw the guy that does the website for the Met,” I whispered to everyone. “Oh my god, if my parents find out we are here, we are going to fry.”

  “I’m getting a beer,” Oliver said. “Come with me, Vats. You guys, these are all just poseurs. They’re like loser hipsters, hangers-on.”

  “Has anyone seen the little pig?” said Vati.

  “You guys go back and try to find Farah. We’ll hang out in this room,” said Oliver.

  “And keep your eye out for Doodle, his little pig. I need to see that thing,” Vati said. I’m telling you the girl is driven mad by tiny cute creatures.

  “Oliver, do you think Dad will find out we’re here?” I said.

  “Don’t freak out, Wren, just go get Farah. They think we’re at a St. Tim’s Christmas party at Benjer’s house,” Oliver said, and gave me a little push.

  “I’ll stay here with them,” Reagan said, gesturing to Oliver and Vati.

  Charlie was already making his way through the moving, dancing crowd. It felt like we were in a sea filled with fish that moved and turned together. The light was even blue. I held on tightly to Nolan’s hand. “I bet she’s back there,” I said, looking deeper into the cavernous loft space.

  “I bet he is back ther
e too. By this point, she’s in his inner circle,” Nolan said. He did not seem freaked out, but I sure was. I didn’t like the term “inner circle.” It sounded sinister.

  Sure enough, Farah was there. Unlike the dark front room, the back was a brightly lit kitchen. This was not your average home kitchen; this looked like the kitchen on Top Chef Masters. It was all souped up, with stainless-steel ten-thousand-dollar Sub-Zero fridges. (I know how much refrigerators cost because of Dining with Dinah. The network paid to replace our old one to accommodate the food for the show.) There was a long, thin table running down the length of the room with chairs that, thanks to my art history classes, I was sure were designed by Mies van der Rohe, the hugely famous German-American architect. On the table were perfectly spaced alabaster eggs that must have been designed with flat bottoms to sit there because they were not rolling around. A few women stood across from the table leaning against sleek black cabinets, drinking from wineglasses with no stems. When we walked in the room, they looked at us like we were the Bad News Bears. Even Nolan looked like a scruffy kid compared to these women, who for sure worked at Vogue. I felt like a less-mature Dinah. I actually felt like May.

  Sitting at the table in a long sheath of a silvery-gray dress was Farah, drinking deeply colored red wine out of one of those stemless glasses too. She looked like she lived there, and a little bit like an alien because she was wearing plum lipstick that was so dark it looked black. Sitting right next to her was Cy Dowd. No sign of the little pig.

  “Farah!” I ran over, squatted down, and hugged her.

  “Wren,” she said very slowly, calmly and controlled. “Oh my god, what are you doing here?” She had a smile plastered to her face, but she was mad.

  “What do you mean? You don’t think I can see things on Facebook? Nolan is my boyfriend. Just because my parents don’t let me have social media doesn’t mean the rest of the free world isn’t on it. We all know about this party.”