40
Life was getting sort of dramatic. After class I saw Farah and Reagan in the hall on our way to Life Science elective, the one class we were in together. The one where we were studying the hummingbirds.
“Hey!” we all said, and awkwardly hugged each other, not really wanting to.
“How was London?” I said to Farah in an overly formal tone.
“Fine, lovely. It was good to see Daddy. Ronica was all about the triplets and I didn’t really deal with her. I think it was part of the plan that Daddy take me to so much theater and to museums and meals out, it would somehow escape me that they have fully started a new family.”
“Oh, did you get to have turkey? I mean, I know they don’t have Thanksgiving over there, but…”
“No, it was on the menu at Claridge’s of course, for Americans, but I didn’t order it.”
“I didn’t have turkey either,” said Reagan, and then the two of them looked at each other in some sort of unpatriotic solidarity.
“Oh.” If it’s lame that I felt insecure about having turkey on the day most of the country has turkey, I get it, but I did. I felt lame about having a real Thanksgiving.
“Where were you, Reag? With your mom?” asked Farah.
“Yeah, we bailed on the whole big meal thing and spun.”
“Like at a spinning class?” said Farah.
“Yeah, the place my mom goes does three-hour classes on Thanksgiving—turkey burns.”
“Genius,” Farah said, sounding fake. “So, tell me about Nolan!” she said, sounding normal. “Vati texted me the whole story, but it was so long and rambling I stopped reading it. I totally want to hear, so spill it, s’il vous plaît.”
“Ohhh, it’s kind of wild. He’s, he’s, wonderful.” We exploded in giggles, which was the biggest relief. I had my friends back. Turtles. Farah even raised her eyebrows really high and did a little excited dance.
“Yeah, it’s really, really wonderful. I thought that time I was being punished was going to be horrendous, but it wasn’t. We talked on the phone, the real phone, for hours. And he picked me up from school … did I tell you that?”
“I actually heard that from, like, six people,” Farah said.
“You did?”
She nodded. “Um, yes, you were the only ninny who didn’t have her phone.”
“Oh yeah, I got all of your texts on Thanksgiving—and he actually came to Thanksgiving!” I said.
“Wow,” Reagan said in sort of a weird way. Did she know that Padmavati was there too? Did she know that Oliver and Padmavati were a couple? Did she care? Reagan is so hard to read. She’s socially awkward; people never think she likes them.
“It’s out of nowhere, right? Sort of?” I said, and Farah shrugged.
“But I feel close to him. He’s, well, he’s my boyfriend,” I said, like I was still trying out the term.
“He said he was really into you,” Reagan said.
“Yeah, he did—I think you totally have a boyfriend,” said Farah.
“When did he say that to you guys?” I asked, bracing myself with excitement.
“At his gig, where he was unreal. That band is amazing,” Farah said. And then the first bell rang.
“He really said he was into me? That is so sweet, right? Oh my god.”
They both nodded and Reagan went into the classroom.
“Farah, Nolan told me something … did you see Cy Dowd last week?”
Second bell.
“Totally.” She sounded so normal about it.
“Girls!” Mr. Trevor bellowed from the science lab. Farah gave a thousand-watt smile and sauntered into science.
41
I only went over to Nolan’s apartment once during the entire time we were together, which seems really strange to me now. But it was far uptown and, not that he ever said it, but Nolan seemed to want to be at our house. So I only went that one time. My parents knew I was going. It was on a Saturday afternoon.
Nolan and his mom lived on Saint Nicholas Avenue on the top two floors of a brownstone. The day I went to see him, Nolan met me at the subway stop. A lot of times when I was going to see Nolan, right before I saw him, the minutes before, I felt alone—isolated. I think it was the almost unbearable anticipation; it separated me from anyone else who was around, or the entire human race. I saw a movie once called Billy Elliot. It was about a boy ballet dancer. During most of the movie he is a young boy, maybe eleven. At the end of the movie you skip ahead in his life and he is a grown man. There is a very specific moment that stuck with me: The grownup Billy is standing offstage, in the wings of a theater, waiting to make an entrance. I’m not even sure you see him, but by the way the camera moves and the sound, you can feel what he is going through. The lights onstage are brighter than anything else in the frame. You hear the music, but it’s muted like you are hearing it through his skull. You can also hear his controlled but heavy breathing, and you might even be able to hear his heart beat, like a thoroughbred before a race. You can’t see the expression on his face at all, but you know he is waiting for it all to happen. There is a real anxiety in the scene, it’s almost agonizing, and it feels lonely, but then he leaps onto the stage, like a strong stag leaping over a fallen tree in the forest. Once he goes, you know it all turned out okay. You know he is exactly where he wants to be, where he needs to be. That is what it felt like before I saw Nolan, like I was about to go onstage. The light was a little too bright, the sound was muted, and I was alone. But then I would see his face, like I did that Saturday when I was walking up the unfamiliar subway steps; I saw his face looking over the gate at me, and in an instant all the fear and isolation were gone. I was in mid-leap, and exactly where I wanted and needed to be.
* * *
“You must be Wren. Come in, come in. I’m Jessica Nolan.”
“Hi,” I said. Nolan, my Nolan, kissed me on the mouth right in front of his mother like we were thirty years old.
The bottom floor of their apartment was small and filled with light. The kitchen, living room, and dining room were all one room. There was a round table with four chairs and a small vase right in the middle, filled with what looked like silk flowers, close to a big light gray L-shaped sofa, with lots of mismatched pillows piled in the corner of the L. There was a flat-screen TV on one wall, and on the other walls were framed posters of famous paintings like Matisse’s painting of pink onions and Picasso’s hand holding flowers. The flowers in the vase looked like the flowers on the poster. It smelled like bark in there, and then I remembered that Nolan sometimes smells like trees.
“Well, I am so glad to meet you, Wren. Nolan just doesn’t stop talking about you.” She reached up and gently grabbed Nolan’s ear and gave it a tug.
“True enough.” He came over and took my coat and bag.
“Oh.” Was I in some kind of indie movie? I went over to the Matisse. “I’ve always loved this painting.”
“Nolan tells me you are a wonderful artist.”
“Well, he’s only seen drawings of my feet,” I said, looking at Nolan like he was a weirdo.
“He says there is a lot about you that is artistic, not only your work. He says you have the soul of an artist.” She gave me a how-about-that look. If Nolan was the prince of confidence, his mother was the queen. Her hair was darker than Nolan’s but it had the same thickness and shiny texture. It was all wrapped up in a bun with one of those leather bun holders that has a stick that you put through it to hold it in place. I think those hair things were made for professors and shrinks—she was both.
“You two should have something to eat. There’s plenty in there, there’s stew from last night.”
“Are you hungry?” Nolan looked at me, tilting his head.
“Not really.”
“Me neither.”
“We’re just going up to my room, Mom.”
“Okay, I’ll be down here. I have finals to grade. So great to meet you, Wren. I hope I see lots of you!”
Nolan led me up
a winding spiral staircase to the second floor, where there was a door open to one room, clearly his mother’s. Her bed had a pretty white, green, and red patchwork quilt spread over it. Each square had two cherries sewn onto its center. It looked like something you would find in the country, and I wondered if maybe she got it when Nolan was a little boy and they lived with his dad. Down the hall was the bathroom, and at the other end there was another door. It had a DANGER NO CROSSING sign that I thought might be left over from when Nolan was in seventh grade. He stepped in front of me and opened the door to a large room that looked like a recording studio. On the side closest to the door there was a window that looked out on the back windows and rooftops of other buildings. It was a lot like the view out my window. On the other side was a bunk bed. The top bed was made, but was piled high with books, and the bottom bed looked like someone had thrown a bunch of sheets and blankets at it. The entire other side of the room was full of guitars, banjos, a keyboard, and an arrangement of hand drums. There was one desk covered with books, papers, binders, and empty water bottles and one bookshelf packed so tightly with books I don’t think you could fit another one in it. Actually there were books everywhere in piles. There were no Tonka trucks or Dungeons & Dragons boards left over from when he was little, like there are in Oliver’s room. Oliver even has a few long-loved stuffed animals that stay very purposefully in the corner of his bed where his mattress meets the wall. Nolan’s room was more like what I think a boy’s room in college would be like. I felt like I was stepping into the future when I walked into that room.
We climbed into the bottom bunk, that smelled musty and like sleep. He lay on his side and I fitted myself into him, flat on my back with my knees up.
“How about my mom?” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“I liked her.”
“My friends are kind of scared of her.”
“I can see that.”
“’Cause she’s no bullshit, right?”
“Yeah, she vibes ‘shrink’ a lot. It feels like she knows something about you, or I wonder if we think that because we know she is a shrink?” I thought for a second. “I think it’s her hair.”
“I get what you mean. She has warrior hair.”
“Yeah,” I said, loving that he understood hair mojo. “Reagan has warrior hair too. All her power is in her hair,” I said, thinking of her ponytail that’s like two inches thick at its base.
“Reagan’s hair protects her, I think,” he said.
“Yeah … from what?” I said, sort of getting what he meant.
“Reagan’s scared,” he said.
“Maybe you’ll be a shrink too one day?” I said.
“Maybe.” He looked like he was losing his train of thought because he did the thing he does when he takes a piece of my hair and wraps it around my ear. Then he snapped out of it. “No! That’s her deal. I’m a musician.” He put his hands out toward all the music stuff in his room like, See? I laughed.
“What was your mom like when you were little?” I asked.
“The same. Mom.”
I smiled because that is the thing I most wanted to do when I was around him.
“Do you remember your mom when you were little?” he asked me.
“I remember that she hated that I got knots in my hair.” He smiled. “I used to get really bad ones.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I think she thought I was going to be a good-for-nothing because of those knots.” That really made him laugh.
“A good-for-nothing! What kind of thing is that to say? That’s like what they called people in eighteenth-century England.”
I flopped over, embarrassed. He poked my back, so I lifted my head.
“Do you remember anything else she thought of you? Or did you always think she thought you were a good-for-nothing?”
“Now you really do sound like a shrink.”
“Well, maybe the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
I smiled again and thought about it for a while. “No. She’s always loved the way I draw.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Even if I was doodling on one of those paper tablecloths in restaurants where they give the kids crayons, she would say, ‘Oh, look at Wren’s elephant,’ or whatever I had doodled. ‘Who can draw like that?’ And she would look around the table like she was really asking them. Like she really thought I was something special.”
We lay there for a while looking at the slats of the upper bunk.
“Nolan.” I turned to him and sat up a little. “Can I tell you something?”
“Yeah, tell me everything.”
“Okay, well, I just feel so … so full of emotion and happy, but more than that. Something feels really big, like I can’t get enough air in my lungs. I’m always overwhelmed, but in a way that feels all right, you know? And, Nolan, it’s a lot about you. In fact, it’s all kind of about you. I just feel so…”
“I’m in love with you too,” he said very simply.
I shot up to my knees. Love?
“That’s what this is, Wren, it’s love. We’re in love.”
The afternoon light was filtering in sideways through the window. In the rays you could see those tiny, floating specks of dust in the air, just like I had seen when I was little in my dad’s arms. It was also like the light in the Vermeer painting we looked at that night in the museum. Have you ever seen a Vermeer painting? That is what this light was doing. One side of Nolan’s face was illuminated so I could see the curve of his lip and the straight edge of his nose. The side that was resting on his hand was in warm shadow.
“I’m in love with you.” He smiled like he knew he was blowing my mind.
“This is love?” I said quietly.
“This is love.”
Love. Streaming light. Nolan. Love.
“I love you too. I am in love with you too.” I felt like I was trying the words on, like I was being crowned and was repeating a two-thousand-year-old oath that I had never said before but that I implicitly believed in. The words shocked a universe of untapped energy into my body, catapulting me off his bed and to the closed, mirrored door of his closet. Nolan followed me and came up right beside me, as if to catch me from running away. Putting his head next to mine, he wrapped his arm around me, securing me, both of us looking at our reflection, which we did silently for a few moments.
“We’re the same,” he guaranteed.
“Really? Do you feel the exact same way as I do? Because, Nolan, I am feeling this very strongly.” There was nothing I could do about the tears that had welled up in my eyes and were making their way down my cheeks. “It’s scaring me.”
“Wren, you can’t feel this way unless the other person feels it too. If you are scared, so am I; if you are happy, so am I; if you want to go somewhere, so do I. It’s the same. We are the same.”
* * *
That was the day I lost my virginity. And here’s the thing about that. It may be true now that Nolan turned out not to be the love of my life, but on that afternoon, it sure felt like he was.
42
If you think I had lost sight of the fact that Farah was in a Lolita affair with a famous artist, I had not. However, it was hard to tell how serious it was at first. It was like when there is a big storm coming. On the television, news reporters are listing what supplies to stock in your house, the mayor is calling for evacuations, stores are running out of batteries. You know a storm is on its way but you have no idea if it will really hit and cause destruction, or if it will blow out to sea. And sometimes, even when the first winds start rushing and the skies darken, you can still find yourself saying, “I don’t think it’s gonna be that bad.”
The loss of my virginity called for a group Turtle meeting, sans Charlie. I texted everyone to meet at my house that Sunday afternoon for a “study session.” Oliver had an away basketball game, my parents were going to Philly (something for Dad’s work), and Dinah was spending the afternoon with one of the only friends that poor
little working girl has, Zoe Powers, who lives on the East Side. So I asked Farah, Reagan, and Vati to come over for lunch.
“You guys,” I said, pulling a loaf of bread out of the fridge. “I have something to tell you.” I flopped the bag of bread on the island that we were all standing around.
“I knew you hadn’t really called a study session,” Farah said.
“Yeah, no.” And then I got super nervous to say it out loud.
“Yes?” Padmavati looked like she knew what I was going to say. Her voice sang.
“So yesterday,” I began. Reagan had her eyes fixed on me and shifted her weight from one hip to the other. “I went over to Nolan’s apartment and—”
“Oh my god!” Vati is clairvoyant.
“It’s just that we … we had sex.” Squeals from all of them, but not in the same tone. Farah’s was more of a laugh, Vati’s was very high pitched, and Reagan sort of said, “Oh yeah!”
“I know!” And then we hugged.
“What was it like?” Vati said once we had calmed down.
“You did it during the day? That is sexy.” Farah asked like she had sex every day, which she might have been for all we knew at that point.
“His mother was there.”
“What? That is insane,” said Reagan.
“Yeah, I know, but she was downstairs and besides, she’s a shrink.”
“That’s sort of nice, right? That she was there. Makes it less scary,” Vati said.
“You must have had to be quiet!” Farah teased.
“Eww, Farah! But you know, it was quiet, and it wasn’t scary.” Everyone piped down and listened.
“We were in his room, and there was this beautiful light coming through the window. We were all snuggled into his bunk bed.”
“He sleeps in a bunk bed?” Reagan gasped.
“Yeah, on the bottom, but it’s one of those ones where the bottom is bigger than the top. It felt like a nest—a grownup nest.”
“Was he nice about it?” Padmavati asked tentatively.