Undressing the Moon

by T. Greenwood

  I sat in the auditorium one afternoon in late March, and watched her transformed onstage into Eliza Doolittle, and then again into a fair lady. She’s a wonderful actress. I am ashamed that I haven’t noticed before. Never mind that she’s been rehearsing for this part since we were children. She is just as good as the actresses I’ve seen in the touring plays that come to Boston and Montreal. As she sang, and danced, a terrible sadness descended over me. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been. I have always just assumed she’d told me the truth: that she returned to Quimby because she couldn’t make it in New York. But that night after rehearsals, when I asked her and she answered, I knew she was lying.

  “Did you come back here because of me?” I asked. “Because you found out I was sick?”

  We were sitting on the edge of the stage eating tuna sandwiches I had made at home.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “From New York.”

  She stuffed a handful of salt-and-vinegar potato chips between the bread and crunched down on the sandwich.

  “I came for the job,” she said, her mouth full.

  “To teach social studies?”

  She nodded, but my heart ached.

  “Becca, why would you do that? How could you give everything up for me? For this?” I waved wildly at the high school auditorium.

  “I didn’t give up anything,” she said. “I wanted to come home.”

  I was accustomed to departures. I wasn’t used to people coming home.

  We lie to each other to save each other, and we keep some secrets to save ourselves. So when I open up the door of my closet and walk in, through the sleeves of summer dresses and boxes of letters and collected things, I tell her I’m only spring cleaning. That the sunshine and blue sky have inspired me to organize my life.

  Boo found an elf costume donated by the elementary school. It would have been too small for anyone else, but Becca still hadn’t grown. It needed mending, so I brought it home along with a beat-up sewing machine that Boo had been unable to sell. While Quinn moped around the house, wishing the snow hadn’t melted, I made Becca’s Peter Pan costume.

  Quinn had come in second at the state meet. He and the winner, a boy from Killington, had been competing neck and neck all season. But Quinn had a full scholarship to UC Boulder for the fall. Now that ski season was over, he was home on the weekends, and he didn’t know what to do with himself.

  While I sat at the kitchen table, repairing the green bodysuit and felt cap, Quinn stood on his hands, his feet pressing against the window.

  “You’ll go right through,” I said.

  His face was red, gravity pulling all of his features down.

  “Your head will explode,” I said, biting off a piece of green thread with my teeth.

  He kicked his legs down and stood up, the scarlet draining slowly out of his face again. “Let’s do something,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere.”

  “I’m trying to make Becca’s costume,” I said. “She needs it by Monday. Dress rehearsal.”

  “Boring,” he said.

  Quinn had a way of wearing me down. I could have been studying for the bar exam or discovering a new planet. He could still distract me. He must have known I’d follow him anywhere.

  In the car I said, “Where are we going?”

  “Shhhh.”

  We stopped at Hudson’s for gas and he handed me a paper bag. Inside there were two roast-beef grinders, a bag of Cheetos, and two cans of iced tea. I didn’t ask him again, I just waited until we got there.

  We took the old toll road that goes to the top of Franklin Mountain. It was icy, but Quinn put chains on the tires before we headed up. I worried a few times that we would get stuck, but Quinn kept moving us forward, up into the clouds. We parked at a clearing near the top of the mountain, where the old fire tower was. A long time ago, before we were born, a man lived up there in the summer. All day long he sat in the tower, looking out over the forests surrounding Quimby, and radioed the fire station in town if he saw smoke or flames threatening the woods below. His one-room cabin was still standing, though the fire tower was falling down. I’d never been all the way up here before.

  Quinn got out of the car and motioned for me to follow him. I grabbed the bag with our lunch and got out of the car. It was colder up here at this elevation, but the sun was bright. There was still a bit of snow on the ground and in the branches of the trees, but not enough to ski on anymore. The ground was littered with rusty beer cans, and there were the blackened remnants of a campfire.

  He was climbing the steps to the tower before I could stop him. I followed, testing every step before putting my full weight on it. At the top, on the rickety platform, my stomach flip-flopped a couple of times with mild vertigo, and then settled.

  It was incredible. I could see for miles and miles. The fire watcher must have felt like God up here, looking out over the whole world, protecting it.

  Quinn stood up and held his arms out and whooped, “Wahoooo!” His voice echoed once, deep and far away. “Try it!” he said.

  I set our lunches down on the floor and held tightly onto Quinn’s shoulder.

  “Come on!” he said and whooped again.

  “Wahoo,” I said. No echo.

  “Louder!”

  “Wahoooo!” I let it come from inside my belly this time. And it came back to me, a smaller, weaker “Wahoo.”

  Quinn laughed. He reached into the paper bag for his sandwich and tore into it, mustard and mayonnaise and tomatoes running down his chin.

  I let go of his shoulder and stood at the edge of the world.

  “Wahooooo!” And this time, the valleys below us, the forests and fields, returned the favor. “Wahooooo!” My own voice, a gift from below.

  I understand what it is that illuminates you, what can turn listless into the exact shade of glow that is you. I am privy to the nature of your yellow, what renders you indigo, red, or the violet of sometimes.

  When I found the music box again, wrapped up in Mum’s blue dress, I brought it out into the living room and set it on the coffee table. I opened the lid, half expecting it to start playing “Edelweiss” when I wound it up. But it was still broken, the music trapped inside.

  You have allowed me this. You have given me the secrets of fireflies, the intricate filament of your incandescence, the filigree embrace of Day rising from Night’s reluctant arms.

  I thought about looking harder, using the People Finder on the Internet to find his address. I imagined myself walking up the steps to his door.

  You have stolen stars by the handful and used them against sorrow, captured them for days when gray threatens us with its naughty fingers to extinguish. On those days, the blue days, I am grateful for the flicker you provide.

  I imagined knocking, handing him the music box. I imagined all the things I wouldn’t know how to say. Because this was simply an even exchange. He gave me my voice, my gift, and then took it away. It was only fair. I had taken something from him, and he from me.

  On the other days, the best days, I am thrilled by all of your impossible hues.

  I had read the poem inside so many times now that it was hardly different in my mind from the poems I’d read in Mr. Ludwig’s class. The phrases were like mantras now. This poem could have been something I’d learned for an exam at school. They were words not connected to me by anything more than a vague memory of someone I used to be. The person I was at fourteen and the world was comprised of colors and lights. When I really believed that there were colors without names.

  (Who else knows how many colors are inside the beating of a monarch’s wings?)

  After our matinee on Sunday, we rolled down the car windows and stopped for hot fudge sundaes at the drive-in. Becca always gets marshmallow, nuts, and whipped cream. I like mine more streamlined: just ice cream, fudge, and a cherry on top.

  “Can we stop by the Atheneum?” I asked.

  Becca looked at me over the top of her monstrous sundae and n
odded. She ate as we drove, managing to keep her new white pants clean.

  “I’ll be out in a second,” I said, when she parked in the library parking lot. “Finish your ice cream.”

  I ran up the steps, my arms and legs feeling remarkably energetic. Inside, I logged on to a free computer and tried once again to compose. But this time, instead of offering apologies, I offered him his own words. I retyped the poem he’d given me all of those years ago; I returned it. And as I clicked on “Send,” I said a little prayer that, in exchange, he might send my voice back to me.

  At home, the world seemed empty without Bog. I couldn’t bear to get rid of his bed yet. I left it sitting in front of the fire-place as if it were just another piece of furniture. I could still smell him on it. I would have to bring it to the cleaners soon and then give it to Boo to sell in her shop.

  Becca made Sunday dinner: stuffed Cornish hens and vegetables for everything that ailed me. She has become an expert of the healing powers of foods. Everything I eat now has a purpose. Heart. Lungs. Bones. And while she busied herself in the kitchen, I dug through the closet for an old shoe box.

  Please let me see you, she had said.

  For a long time I thought about finding her, about driving along the coast of Maine or New Hampshire, Maryland or Massachusetts, searching. I imagined conversations with strangers, directing me here or there for her. I could see myself finding her apartment or house or motel room. I could even imagine the sea-weathered walls and could almost hear myself knocking on the door. But I also knew that I wouldn’t recognize her anymore. She could never be how she lived in my memory. She would only be the fragments of someone I used to know.

  Please let me see you.

  So, here I was. I wrapped the music box in newspaper and put it inside the shoe box. I covered the box in brown paper and wrote my mother’s last address on the front. She always knew what to do with broken things; perhaps she would know what to do with this one.

  And that night, as Becca snored softly on the couch, I understood what I’d wanted. I’d only wanted for someone to take care of me. To stay. Someone real. Someone whole. And I understood, finally, she was already here.

  On the night of Becca’s performance in Peter Pan, I went to the shed to look for something to give her as a gift. To thank her and to apologize, as if gratitude and apologies necessarily go hand in hand. I turned on the lightbulb over Mum’s worktable, and looked for something, but everything here was broken. She’d left before she finished mending everything.

  Inside my room, I stood on my bed and stared through the red glass heart at the full moon outside. She said that without light, the stained glass was useless, that it was not the glass that was beautiful, but the quality of light behind it. I imagined that the night she left, the sky was without moon or stars. Without light, she might not have been able to see how beautiful everything was that she had made.

  I carefully lifted the wire suspending it and laid the pane gently on my bed. I wrapped it in a T-shirt and put it in my backpack. Quinn drove me to the high school auditorium, and we sat together in the middle seats of the middle row.

  Becca was perfect as Peter Pan. Like Peter Pan, she still hadn’t grown up. Maybe she never would; maybe all it took to stay a child was belief. And I knew that despite the harness and wires holding her off the ground, she believed that night that she could fly. And for a moment, I believed, too.

  After the show, she came running to us before she went to her parents who were standing in their coats waiting by the door.

  “I’ve got to go see my parents, but I’ll be right back,” she said, out of breath, flushed.

  Quinn squeezed my hand. “She was great.”

  “She is great,” I said.

  I gave the glass picture to Becca, and she touched all the places where the shattered pieces were joined. She held it up to the streetlight outside the school and looked through each color, changing the color of the world.

  It was almost summer. Soon, the sun would shine and shine. I knew the way that dawn looked through the red. I knew the colors of sunset it had made on my walls.

  My mother taught me how to find grace in wreckage. She taught me not how to reassemble, but how to rearrange. The stained-glass pictures she made were certain evidence that things can be broken and put back together, and that the mended thing will be more beautiful than the original. That true beauty is in the cracks, in the places where the pieces have once been shattered and then mended.

  Years later, I am sitting in the same auditorium watching Becca become someone else on stage. She still hasn’t grown up; she still believes in the possibility of flight. But tonight the gift I have brought for her is something she won’t be able to use until after I’m gone.

  I felt silly making it. I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the tape recorder for almost an hour before I hit “Record.” I’d practiced a few times, but I was self-conscious. I closed my windows and waited until all the little old ladies had left the park, as if their hearing aids would pick up my voice from this far away.

  Then I closed my eyes and waited for the colors to come. The color my mother called holiday. The color of sadness, of sorrow. And then slowly the color of sunshine. On water on the sunniest summer day.

  SIX

  If summer here were made of colored glass, this is the way the light would shine through this summer. Sparklers reflecting in the water of the fountain, lights sparkling in the gazebo in the park. The pink of cotton candy, orange snow cones, and the color of breeze.

  From my window I watch Kit and Becca holding hands, walking across the park. They spread a blanket near the fountain and rest there, listening to the band, listening to each other’s stories about what came before. Becca has started wearing her hair a different way, down around her shoulders, like liquid fire. The light catches this and holds it, saves it for later.

  She will come home after the concert, after she and Kit have stood on the front porch each trying to figure out whether or not the other wants to be kissed, for what might seem to them like hours. And then she’ll come up the stairs quietly, so as not to wake me up. I sleep in the living room now, because dawn comes through these windows first. We moved my bed out here three weeks ago. Becca says we’re allowed to break these kinds of rules.

  I’ll open my eyes when I hear the teakettle starting to whistle. She’ll try to pull it from the heat in time, but it will already be breathing steam. I think a little part of her hopes that I’ll wake up and keep her company on nights like these. Help her to figure the night out. But tonight, I’m very tired. I feel sleep descending like quiet thieves.

  I look out the window at the park below and she looks up and sees me. She smiles, waving, and I wave back.

  Summer here is made of colored glass. I walk barefoot along the amber path that leads to the gate, put my hand on the amethyst knob, and step carefully into the garden. Moon reflects in cobalt pools: slivers of grass are wet with dew. Emerald blades. Topaz stepping-stones beneath my feet, and wings of tangerine. And in this evening glass garden, I remember the song I’ve forgotten, the one I used to hum in my mother’s arms. The one I made up to keep myself safe, to make myself sleep. I remember the color of sorrow, of sorcery, of sorry. And I sing it softly, so that nothing breaks.

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  UNDRESSING

  THE MOON

  T. Greenwood

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  The following discussion questions and author interview are included to enhance your group’s reading of

  UNDRESSING THE MOON.

  Discussion Questions

  1. Early in Undressing the Moon, Piper calls herself “a thirty-year-old girl.” What caused her to see herself that way? Did she ever become a woman?

  2. Piper’s mother left when Piper was fourteen years old, but in a way, so did her father. Do you think she was affected more or less by his absence than her mother’s? Discuss Piper’s relationship with her father before and after her mother
left as well as in the present.

  3. Discuss Piper’s relationships with all of the men in her life: her father, Quinn, Mr. Hammer, Blue Henderson, Jake. How has each of them shaped her as a woman, sexually, physically, and emotionally? Are any or all of them the reason she’s single now?

  4. In a sense, Piper’s mother didn’t fully leave; she remained attached with phone calls and gifts. Do you think that made it harder for Piper to deal with her abandonment? Would it have been different if her mother completely disappeared from her life?

  5. Piper’s mother and father also walked out on Quinn. Talk about how he handled the situation, the role he played as a guardian to Piper, and how his new responsibilities affected his school, work, and skiing.

  6. Aunt Boo knew where Piper’s mother went but wouldn’t share that information. Do you feel that was fair to Piper? Considering what she knew, what role did Boo play in Piper’s upbringing? Was she more of a substitute mother or an accomplice? How do you think she felt about her position? How did Piper feel about it?

  7. How does Piper cope with her breast cancer? Do you think it’s a healthy way to handle her illness? Do you agree with Becca when she says that Piper isn’t trying to stay alive anymore? Why?

  8. Piper relies on Becca for emotional strength throughout the novel, both as a teenager and as an adult. How would she have gotten through both periods of her life without Becca? What does Becca give up by helping Piper? What does she gain?

  9. The image of glass—broken glass and the stained glass Piper’s mother creates—is prevalent in Undressing the Moon. What does it represent, beyond the shattering of Piper’s life? How does it relate to her current situation? Are there other images that resonate with you? If so, which ones and why?

  10. Colors are also important in the novel. Do any in particular stand out to you as being especially strong? How do you feel about Piper’s mother describing her voice as “holiday”?