“It’s all going to be okay.”
56
It was too cold to walk through the park so Mom gave me money for a cab. I was doing everything I could so I wouldn’t cry during the ride through the transverse. Deep breathing, tugging at my sleeve, biting my lip, it worked enough so I wasn’t crying, but I felt tight in my chest and like I was holding back a sneeze that was going to come out of me eventually whether I liked it or not. I didn’t know what it was going to feel like to have my heart broken, but the fracture felt pretty bad already. Nolan was standing on the Met steps when the cab pulled up to the curb. There were about a million tourists and museumgoers out there with him. People on the steps have been doing the same things for as long as I can remember. They drink coffee, eat Sabrett hot dogs from the nearby carts, take pictures, talk to each other, look at their phones, think, sketch, chat, smoke. And there were swarms of them doing all that stuff, but I saw Nolan right away. He was waiting for me, so good-looking in his grandfather’s overcoat, the same dark army-green scarf wrapped around his neck, jeans, and his purple high-tops. He had a big smile for me. It was so normal and friendly that for one gloriously relaxing moment I let myself think: Charlie is wrong.
I paid the driver with the ten-dollar bill that had been folded in my hand since my mother gave it to me on our stoop and got out of the taxi. It really was freezing outside. A big wind must have come in the middle of the night and pushed the warm, soupy weather away. It felt like Christmas, but I was cold for the first time since the day of the party when I met Nolan.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he said, and kissed me on the cheek. Every molecule in my body wanted to be wrapped up in his arms, like I had been on the subway on the night we escaped my father’s party, and in the park and at his house. There wasn’t an inch of me that wanted him at a distance, but that is where he stayed—at a distance.
“You want to go in?” he said cheerfully. I shook my head. “No?” I shook it again. Did he really think we were going tie shopping?
“Nolan?” I looked up at him, but my eyes squinted shut because of the sun, or because I had been crying. They felt raw, and suddenly I felt weak, so I sat down on the stone step. He sat next to me. I decided not to look at him. I could hear the rush of traffic stop when the light turned red.
“So.” I didn’t know how to get the words out.
“Wren.” His voice startled me, his beautiful voice.
“Yeah.” I felt like I was going to cry again.
“I think I know what you are going to say, and I feel sick,” he said.
“What?” I looked into his face.
“I haven’t been honest with you.” He said that so slowly and almost nobody on Earth would mistake what it meant, but I kept looking in his face hoping he wasn’t going to say what I knew he was going to say.
“I—I’m afraid that I…” he began. I kept looking right at him, holding back tears with all my might.
“Reagan and me are, we are together. Something happened when she came to one of our gigs and we talked, and that led to…” His voice faded into the traffic noise and the frigid air and the roar in my head.
Have you ever been in a place, not an emotional place—like a room or on a bus or a train—where you know you shouldn’t be? Like every instinct in your body tells you that you need to get out of there? Once I got on a subway going uptown when I was supposed to be going downtown. All I wanted to do was get on the right train. If I could have jumped off that train going in the wrong direction I would have. Of course I couldn’t, I would have gotten killed. But now I could.
I looked at him for what I was pretty sure would be the last time.
“I changed my life for you. Do you get that?” He didn’t say anything. I was talking about Saint-Rémy, and the words were coming out of me like I was possessed—maybe by my mother, or Mrs. Rousseau, or just a better version of myself. “I didn’t apply and now it’s over.” I looked up at the huge museum where my father was probably sitting at his desk and got even more resolve. “I missed the deadline on purpose—for you!” I pointed at him. “Because you said I shouldn’t do it and that we should be together! I believed you and it was totally stupid, because, because, well, now it’s over.” He looked so stunned, like I had slapped him.
“But, Wren—”
“No!” I held out my hand. “Maybe … ultimately it was my fault, because, well, because it was mine to give away, not yours, but I can’t get it back. Everything, everything is changed!”
And then I ran.
I ran down Fifth Avenue. For about half a block I could hear him running behind me calling my name, but I ran faster and soon his voice was gone. I ran across Seventy-Ninth Street with so many cars turning out of the park transverse I felt like I was going to get hit. I ran past the Frick Museum on Seventieth Street. I ran past people and strollers and bus stops. I ran past the Central Park Zoo on Sixty-Fifth Street, I ran past the people selling books on Fifty-Ninth Street, I ran past the Plaza and past the horses and carriages lined up to take people for a holiday ride in the park. My mind was blank. I ran past the Bergdorf windows, and at St. Thomas Church on Fifty-Third, I turned right and ran straight up to the doors of the Museum of Modern Art.
57
I handed over my family membership card to the guy sitting behind the admission desk, and while he looked at his computer, I checked my phone, trying to catch my breath.
Nolan: Come back! Please I am so sorry.
Nolan: I am still at the steps. Please
Missed call—Nolan
Missed call—Nolan
Missed call (VM)—Reagan
Missed call—Nolan
Nolan: Wren. I am sorry. Come back. Need to explain.
CLEAR ALL.
I didn’t need an explanation. Not then. I took my pass back, put it in my wallet, and listened to the low, hollow rumble of foreign languages and footsteps while I rode the smooth escalators to the fifth floor. The hum of the museum carried me until I turned the corner into the gallery and could see The Starry Night. I hadn’t seen it in person since I met Nolan. How did I never take him here? There were people looking at it when I arrived and people lined up behind me for their turn to see it. Being in front of The Starry Night felt like seeing my oldest friend, or our kitchen table, or a family photo album that every once in a while you find yourself thumbing through even though you have seen it a zillion times. I was reminded by the French or Italian or German conversations around me that some of these people lived far away and this could easily be their very first time to see the swirling, bright stars, the mystery of the deep blue sky, the steeple in the village, and the looming cypress trees in the foreground. I wondered if they loved it.
You can’t really sit on the floor in the museum. I don’t think it’s allowed, and at that time of year it’s downright stupid because there are so many people milling around, but I did. I meant to only put my bag between my legs while I stood, but either from the running or the slow realization that everything was not as it seemed, I just sank down until I was on the floor. I saw a guard look at me funny. How I wished The Starry Night was at the Met, with Dad and Bennet and the other guards I knew close by, and carpet beneath me that I had sat on since I was a little girl. But the Met didn’t have that painting, and that was the painting I needed.
I looked up at van Gogh’s masterpiece and counted the bursting yellow stars. One, two, three—all the way until I got to eleven. I let my eyes drift to the biggest one, the one I wish on.
Please let him love me. I shut my eyes tight but I could still see the star in the darkness of my mind. Please, please let him still love me. Tears squeezed out of the sides of my eyes, and I could feel my mouth turn down. “Please let him still love me,” I said in a trembling whisper. I felt a bump of a leg.
“Pardon me,” said an older, elegant woman, frowning and probably annoyed that I was on the floor.
I scrambled up. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Oh�
��you are just a young girl!” the woman said in a French accent. She was wearing a camel-colored woolen coat that was cinched at her waist by a belt of the same color. Around her neck was an Hermès scarf with a pattern of gold buckles and brown horses. She had a short haircut that looked done, as if she had been to the salon that day. She looked like once upon a time she might have been a movie actress.
“What were you doing down zere? Wishing for love out loud?”
I was stunned she had heard me, and I stood frozen and speechless.
“Please, come look.” She gently took my shoulders and moved me in front of her so we were both facing forward. “Zis is one of ze great paintings in all of time, in all of ze world. It’s Ze Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, a genius.”
I looked at the sleeping town of Saint-Rémy.
“He knew his destiny, and he painted it here,” she said, pointing and smiling at the stars in the swirling heavens. “What are you crying about, dear girl? Your destiny?”
“A boy that I love doesn’t love me,” I said.
“Well zen, zis boy, he is not your destiny. He is just a boy.”
58
What was my destiny? Well, I will tell you, it wasn’t to sit under those stars and paint in France. No, when I missed that chance, I really missed it. Some things you can’t get back. For a while my destiny was to live through the drama that is heartbreak. I found out that for a bunch of friends, breakups are far more exciting than hookups. I will tell you why I think that is: there are a million stories about falling in love, from Tristan and Iseult to Twilight, but when it happens to you, it is a brand-new feeling. And as much as you want to describe it to someone who hasn’t experienced it, you can’t. When the universe decides to give you love, it’s like you have gotten an A on a test when everyone else got a C—you keep it to yourself.
But unlike love, everyone gets breakups—even if they have never gone through a breakup. Breakups are mechanical. They have parts, twists, and layers, and as I found out, your friends will talk endlessly about what happened. I’m not sure if you ever get to the bottom of it. Even Dinah tried.
“So that’s it?” Dinah said, taking down a silvery glass ball from the Christmas tree and putting it into one of those ornament boxes from the Container Store. “Nolan is just outty?”
I twirled a candy cane around my finger. “Seems to be.” I kept twirling and not doing my job of taking down the decorations from the tree.
“And he’s with Reagan?” she said, looking at me wide eyed.
“Yup.”
“That is messed up. Are you so mad at her? Isn’t that so against the code?” She held her hands out to the side like Dad does if he gets cut off in traffic by another car.
“I guess people have different codes,” I said, and bit the cellophane wrapper off the tip of the candy cane and started sucking it like a pacifier, then took it out again. “And some people, like Reagan, have no codes or morals.” I put the candy back in my mouth and sucked harder.
“Are you going to yell at her and so not be her best friend?”
“I want to yell at her, but I weirdly also want to be her friend, I think.” I lay down on the sofa with my candy cane, exhausted. “Maybe not her best friend.”
Dinah scurried over holding a fox ornament with a Santa hat on, and tucked herself in a corner of the sofa. She tugged at my big toe. “Did she like steal him from you? Like a sly fox!” She laughed her head off that she actually had a fox in her hand. I kicked her to shut up. “Okay, okay.” She calmed herself. “But are your friends going to give her the Heisman? Like, talk-to-the-hand?” She held her hand out in the talk-to-the-hand motion. “And is Nolan such a dick?”
“Dinah!” If Mom were there Dinah would get a point for using that word (three points and you get no media all weekend. It’s been a rule since Oliver was eleven and started swearing around the house).
“Well, I thought he loved you!”
“Well, so did I.”
“That’s confusing,” she said, and tilted her little red head to the side. “But,” she held up her pointer finger, “I guess you aren’t grownups.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you are still learning—you’re not parents yet!”
“Still learning? That’s something they said in Montessori nursery school.”
“So? Everything you learn in nursery school is like the most important stuff you ever learn.” She lifted her skinny arms up straight over her head and clasped her fingers together.
“Well, I don’t remember learning what to do when the boy that you love falls in love with your friend, so.” I looked up at the half-naked tree and had a flash of Nolan putting the blanket on Reagan. My heart felt separate from my body. Like it had its own set of arms and legs and muscles and wanted to pull away from me and go wherever Nolan was. Was he playing music? Reading? In the park? Was he with her?
“You should yell at Reagan. Like yell your head off at her.” She arched over the arm of the sofa until she was doing a back bend and I could only see her legs and tummy.
“I am giving her the silent treatment.” I sighed.
“Thaaaattttssss nottt satttisssfyyying.” Her voice was straining and all weird because she was upside down. I had sucked a really pointy tip on my candy cane. I stuck it between my eyes, hoping the tip would be like an acupuncture needle and would hit some chakra in my face and all of my sorrow and confusion could pour out of that tiny, important hole.
59
To say that fifth-period lunch on the first day back from the holiday break was awkward is a huge understatement. Maybe if I had been in my thirties and got my heart broken, I could have gone away on a trip abroad to recover, like the characters do in E. M. Forster novels, but being fifteen, there was no escape from seeing Reagan at school. I avoided her for the morning, but the minute I walked in the lunchroom, there she was at our table, eating a grilled cheese bagel and reading a book.
“Okay. Let’s just calmly get our lunches and discuss what we will do about this situation,” said Vati, pulling a pumpkin-colored plastic lunch tray off the pile.
“I feel like if I ate even a grape I would throw it up,” I said, taking the next tray.
“Just have milk maybe. And maybe crackers,” she said, as she headed down the lunch line.
“Oh wait, they have chicken soup. I think I can eat that.” I looked ahead at Emma Fox waiting for Mrs. Posner, the lunch lady, to ladle her a soup.
“Good idea, protein. Do you want to sit with Reagan and just have it out? I don’t know where else we can sit without it being a major statement, and I think the stronger choice would be just to confront her and get it over with. You guys can’t not talk to each other for the rest of your lives.”
“Chicken soup please, Mrs. Posner,” I said when it was my turn to be served. “Okay, but maybe you should say something first. I think if I try to talk to her I’ll cry and that would be stupid.”
“Totally, I can do that, but crying isn’t stupid. This is a big-time situation,” Vati said, and took a grilled cheese bagel from the rack.
Vati looked at me with her big brown Indian Katy Perry eyes, and blinked very seriously and very purposefully. It meant solidarity.
As we neared the table Reagan looked up, dog-eared the page she was on, and smiled at me. At the same time, from the corner of my eye I saw Farah heading straight for the table, almost running, as if she wanted to get there before the action started. Reagan’s smile was not what I was expecting and it triggered my impulses before the plan could go into action. I slammed my tray down on the table, spilling my soup.
“Wipe that smile off your face!” I said, so loudly that the girls at other tables looked over. “What is your problem, Reagan?” I said in my most vicious tone.
She didn’t say anything, but I saw tears come into her eyes.
“Talk!” I commanded. Vati and Farah didn’t say a word.
“I’m sorry, Wren,” Reagan said, tears falli
ng.
“Sorry?” Now I felt like I was in a movie. “Sorry?”
“Yes,” Reagan said.
I was out of breath and still clutching the sides of the tray. There was even some soup on my hand.
“Sorry doesn’t mean anything, Reagan!” My mother says that to me sometimes when I mess up and say sorry defensively. “Unless you mean it!” I was panting.
“Well, I do mean it,” Reagan said steadily. I looked to Farah for some guidance or a snappy comeback. She had nothing but wide eyes for me.
“Are you together with Nolan?” I felt my ears get hot, and when that happens it means my chest is blotchy. I can never hide that I am upset, which is so uncool.
“Yes,” said Reagan. She kept looking at me. Vati put her tray down on the table and then put her hand on my back. All the burn came to my eyes and I started to cry.
“Well, I know that already and I have to say, that it Really. Hurts. My. Feelings!” I tell you, it did kind of feel like nursery school where you are encouraged to tell a friend you’re having an altercation with how they are making you feel. I was using my words.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. It was her mantra. I didn’t know what else to say so I sat down. Farah marched over to the condiment table, took about fifty napkins, came back, and cleaned up my soup. Vati sat down next to me and took a big bite of her cheesy bagel. You would think that Reagan might have gotten up, in shame or fear or something. But she didn’t. After Farah helped me wipe up the chicken soup, she threw away the napkins and constructed a big colorful salad. And then the four of us ate lunch in silence. I didn’t leave.
I wanted to storm out, turn my back, smack her, whatever, but I didn’t do any of that stuff. I knew because of the Saint-Rémy fiasco what it was to be held accountable for something you did wrong and I guess I wanted answers from her.
“Um, so what did happen?” I asked Reagan.
Starry Night Page 24
