Starry Night

  “What’s pretty about being thirty?” I looked up at Reagan. From where I was sitting on the floor, and how she was sitting on the bed, I could only see half of her face, and her crossed legs.

  “Because when we’re thirty, we’ll be in the groove of our lives and it’ll be badass. When you draw, you can tell that it’s what you are supposed to do,” she said, and sat up. “Like, you can see your badass-who-you-are-going-to-be self on your face. It’s more than pretty … see, you have that look on right now. I’m going to take a picture of you and post it on Quickypic.” She swiped on her phone, typed in the password, and then put it in front of her face to take the picture. “And then Nolan will see it and he will so fall even more in love with you.”

  Click.

  “Nolan follows you on Quickypic?”

  “Yeah.” I felt a little jealous ripple in the back of my throat. “He follows me too. But I only post my drawings,” I said.

  “I’ll hashtag it #wrendraws,” she said while typing with both thumbs.

  “Can I see it?” She handed her phone over. My hair was piled on top of my head, and there was even a smudge of charcoal on my forehead, but I have to say I liked the picture. I wasn’t smiling or anything, but it looked like a me that I would want Nolan to see.

  “That is so Cyrano of you,” I said, handing her back the phone.

  “Who’s Cyrano?” Reagan said and took a nonsmiling selfie. Click.

  “Cyrano was a smart poet guy who loved this woman, Roxanne, but he had a big nose so he didn’t think she would love him. And this other guy, I forget his name, loved Roxanne too, but he was a dumbass, good-looking, but not a poet. So, for some reason, Cyrano said he would write really beautiful, smart love letters for the dumb guy, so Roxanne would fall in love with him. And she did. I don’t think she ever found out that Cyrano was the one writing the letters. But I do think she died.”

  “But I don’t love Nolan,” Reagan said.

  “Right, but you are helping me by sending him a picture of me drawing and looking pretty, so you are kind of doing a selfless thing in the name of someone else’s love,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t have a big nose,” she said and took another selfie, this time giving the camera a wink.

  “No, you do not.” She showed me her selfie. Reagan had Mad Men looks. Her thick black Welsh, mojo hair naturally tumbled around her shoulders and fell on her soft black angora sweater. All the black made her skin white as half and half cream. She could really bring it in a picture.

  “Want to take one together?” I asked.

  And we did.

  45

  I guess it’s global warming, but that December, instead of snow, the city was enveloped in fog. The weather warmed, you didn’t need your parka, and Manhattan had a bank of mist rolling across it all month. It was supremely cozy. You kind of felt like you lived in Scotland, and each morning when you woke up you could hardly make out the branches on the trees. This fog fed Nolan’s and my knights-of-the-round-table plans to kidnap the fair Farah away from the dubious, older, mysterious Cy Dowd.

  As much as we wanted to meet and scheme in a tree house or somewhere (we, meaning Nolan, Oliver, Padmavati, Charlie, Reagan, and myself), we lived in the city and couldn’t see each other all that much. We didn’t live in the suburbs with basements and garages, where I imagine kids in the suburbs gather. In any case, this plan took shape on our phones in text messages. Facebook ended up playing a key role too, but I was a little out of it there because my parents had ironclad restrictions on my computer for all social media. Reagan and Nolan, however, had free rein in their houses, so they could spy on Farah, who, like a dingbat, posted every move she made or was going to make, even parties and gallery openings that were obviously all about Cy. And as it turned out, even though Cy Dowd was ancient, he was as deft at social media as us teenagers and his Facebook page was a road map.

  GROUP MESSAGE

  Charlie: Farah is in trouble. I read on Gawker Cy Dowd was married.

  Me: I think he was married. Dad said divorced.

  Reagan: U told ur dad?

  Me: No way. I asked in a totally nonobvious way.

  Nolan: Mr. Noorlander would never suspect someone his daughter’s age would be with that guy.

  Vati: Farah said she thinks she has crabs.

  Me: What????

  Charlie: That is disgusting.

  Nolan: Doesn’t surprise me. The guy gets around.

  Oliver: Don’t talk about that shit. Farah is like my sister.

  Me: She’s like my sister.

  Oliver: I’m going to throw up.

  Reagan: She didn’t come to a sleepover at my house but told her mother she was here.

  Me: Why isn’t she talking to me?

  Vati: She thinks you are judging her.:(

  Me: Aren’t we all worried?

  Vati: Worried is different than judgmental.

  Nolan: She might be freaked because Cy is in the same circles as Wren’s parents.

  Reagan: He is having a “Not So Silent Night” party right before Xmas. Saw on FB.

  Me: U r his “friend”?

  Reagan: He is everyone’s friend. Has like 60k friends.

  Nolan: Anyone know if she is going?

  Charlie: Of course she’ll go. She’s a super freak about him.

  Nolan: Just found the party on his FB page. I think we are all going to this. It’s on the 19th. Friday night.

  Me: Last day of finals. My parents will let me go out that nite I’m almost sure.

  Oliver: I’ll say I’m taking you and Vats to a party. I’m golden now that I got in to MIT early.

  Vati: ☺☺☺☺

  Reagan: Cambridge is f-ing cold.

  Nolan: I have a gig that night but it’s early. I will meet up with you guys.

  Reagan: I’m in.

  Charlie: I’m in.

  Me: We’ll go get her.

  Nolan: Intervention style. Peace out. W—call you later.

  Vati: Awwww

  46

  The last episode of the season that Dinah shoots is the New Year’s episode. This year she decided to ask the network if she could do something different and have five of her school friends in the episode. In some version of The View format, the girls would sit around the kitchen table, eat hoppin’ John, a black-eyed pea dish that Dinah wanted to make for the show, and tell their resolutions. (Apparently it’s like a three-hundred-year-old tradition to eat black-eyed peas in the South on New Year’s Day—it brings you good luck.) Dinah said it would connect her with her audience if they saw she actually had friends, and I think she saw a similar year-end episode on Barefoot Contessa, where Ina Garten had a bunch of her friends over. Dinah is so ambitious, I am telling you.

  So anyway, Mom wanted me around to help with the girls. In real life, none of the ten-year-olds were allowed to wear anything but ChapStick yet so the TV hair/makeup part was insanity. The girls went crazy trying on fifty different colors of lip gloss and having their hair blown out with a hair dryer the size of their arms. It was like Alvin and the Chipmunks meets Little Women.

  Once they were lit and sitting around the table eating and talking, Mom and I sat on the stairs in the shadows and watched.

  “My New Year’s resolution is to remember to feed and change the water of my lovebird, Pinky. I always forget and my mom yells at me,” Susan Meyers said. All of these girls were in Dinah’s class at Hatcher. I recognized some of them from school assemblies. Dinah doesn’t have a lot of playdates because of her show. It’s kind of sad, but I guess it’s a trade-off for fame and fortune.

  “Cut! Camera reload!” yelled the director. Dinah and the rest of the girls used the break to say what a good job Susan had done.

  “What is your New Year’s resolution this year, Wrenny?” Mom was still in her pottery clothes. She wears bandannas on her head so her hair doesn’t fall into her students’ work when she bends over to help them make pots on the wheel. That day she was wearing a light blue bandanna wi
th little yellow rosebuds on it. She smelled like clay.

  “I don’t know, what’s yours?”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? I don’t like that answer.” I’m sure I sighed. I don’t know is never a good answer for my mother.

  “Um, well, I always can be better at putting my stuff in my backpack before bed.”

  “Yeah, that would be good … nothing else? I don’t know, something more meaningful? Oh wait, they are starting. Shh.”

  “Aannnnnd action,” said Jeff, the director, from “the village,” which is where the video monitor stands so the director and the key people can watch and see that everything looks okay while they shoot. This time it was Max Burns’s time to share. (Max is a girl.)

  “I resolve”—they were told that they couldn’t all say “My New Year’s resolution will be…”; they each had to come up with something more interesting—“to write to my pen pal in Honduras. It’s fascinating to learn about a different culture, but if I don’t write, I’ll never learn.”

  “Cut. Let’s try that one again. Dinah, maybe you could be passing the hoppin’ John during this take,” Jeff said.

  “Okay, Jeff. Got it,” Dinah said, like a seasoned pro. The other girls sat up a little straighter and nodded like they were in the loop too. I thought it was good if they were impressed with her.

  “Thanks, Dinah. Give us one second and we’ll start from the top with Max.”

  “You know,” my mother continued (I was hoping she might have forgotten her train of thought). “Is there anything you are aspiring to this year?” she whispered while keeping her eyes on what was going on in the shot.

  “Well…” I felt a surge of blood rush to my face and knew I was about to say something I hadn’t fully thought through. “I was thinking instead of going to France next year…” She turned her head to me and looked like the word “instead” was vinegar in her mouth, but I continued. “I was thinking I would stay in New York and maybe take classes at the Art Students League?” Then she looked at me like I had slapped her.

  “What?” She spasmed. Her neck jutted out at me like she was a lizard about to attack. “What are you talking about?” she hissed.

  “I, just, I mean, France is far … and maybe I don’t want to go so far away?”

  “When,” she said too loudly, quickly calmed herself, and went back to a whisper as there were fifteen people in our kitchen. “When did you start to think about that? You have been dreaming and wanting Saint-Rémy for so long, Wren.”

  “I know, I know, but maybe, I’m changing my mind.”

  “Oh, Wren, you’re breaking my heart.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, yes you are. I don’t understand why you would out of nowhere change your mind. Is it because you think you will fail math?”

  “No, no that’s not it.”

  “Jesus, this is going to kill your father,” she said quietly, while pinching the rim of her nose with her pointer finger and thumb.

  “I didn’t say it was for sure, I just…”

  “Have you not finished your portrait?” She looked straight at me again.

  “Annnnddd action,” the director called.

  “I resolve to write my book buddy,” Max Burns said.

  “Cut! Book buddy?” Jeff almost yelled.

  “Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry. I meant pen pal, sorry!” Poor Max.

  “Reset!” Jeff was going bonkers. It’s like Dinah was the only kid he had ever met. And Dinah really isn’t a kid.

  “Mom, I’ve tried so hard, but I haven’t finished my self-portrait,” I admitted.

  “Oh god.” She put her bandanna-covered head in her hands.

  “But that isn’t why I don’t want to go, or why I am changing my mind.” She looked up at me like, Well, what is then?

  “I don’t want to leave New York.”

  She put her head back down. “Come up to my room.”

  * * *

  My parents’ neutrally toned, quiet, mohair and plumped-pillowed room usually felt like a sanctuary, but at that moment it made me think of a padded cell.

  “Now, what in the hell are you talking about, Wren?” My mother went to her dressing table, sat on the stool, crossed her legs, and whipped her kerchief off like it was a stupid hat she suddenly was embarrassed to be wearing.

  “Mom, calm down.”

  “DON’T tell me to calm down. God almighty, I hate it when children tell me to calm down.”

  “It’s not that big a deal,” I lied.

  “Goddamn it!” she slapped her knee. “It is a big deal. God, how I hate it when kids say it’s no big deal.”

  “It’s not like I’m failing out of school, or I’m freaking doing drugs!”

  “No, no, it isn’t, Wren—and there is absolutely no reason to attempt to distract me from the matter at hand by reminding me you don’t do drugs—that’s a cheap tactic. Here is why it’s a big deal.” She spread her legs open and put one hand on each knee.

  “It’s a big deal because France is your dream, Wren. You have been focused on going to France since Mrs. Rousseau suggested it was something for you to aim for two years ago.”

  “I know,” I said.

  She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and zoomed her way to the calendar. “It’s—my god, Wren—it’s due on the fifteenth. It’s the tenth!” She clicked off her phone. “It’s the tenth,” she repeated sadly.

  “Nolan said…” Mom sat straight up and let the hand with her phone in it drop.

  “Nolan? Nolan has something to do with this?” She stood up with her hands gripping into the sides of her hair and started walking back and forth across the plush woolen wall-to-wall carpeting.

  “No, totally not. It’s my idea,” I lied.

  “That makes no sense. Why did you say Nolan?”

  “Because he is supportive of me.”

  “And he supports this terrible idea of yours that you STOP TRYING?”

  “I AM TRYING!” That was louder than I meant it to be but she started it.

  “Do you know what I think?” she said, zeroing in on me.

  “No.” I took one step back.

  “I think that this is Nolan’s idea,” she said, while pointing at me.

  “It isn’t.”

  She looked at me the same way she used to look at me when I said I had brushed my teeth and hadn’t, but this time she couldn’t smell my breath.

  “It isn’t,” I insisted. “I just don’t want to go anymore.”

  “Well, that makes me want to cry.” She did look like she was going to cry.

  “Well, I’m sorry.” I felt panicky, like the walls were going to collapse on us. She stood in the middle of the room and looked at her bedside table. On it is a picture of Oliver, Dinah, and me taken from behind so you just see our backs. We are walking on one of the paths in Central Park. I couldn’t help but think she was wishing it was that day in the park, when we had a picnic of deli sandwiches on the Great Lawn, and that it wasn’t five years later, dealing with me, her failure daughter.

  “I’m going downstairs to see Dinah. I can’t think of what to say to you.” She steadily walked by me with a steely look on her face. “But I’m sure your father will come up with something.”

  47

  I did not go back down to the New Year’s Eve taping. For the rest of that day I resolved to lie low. I was dying to commiserate with Oliver, but he wasn’t home, so I texted with Nolan.

  Me: Hi:-)

  Nolan: Just found out Dad will be in Florida for Xmas dealing with Elaine’s dead mom’s house.

  Me: Aren’t you going to Pittsburgh for Xmas???

  Nolan: Thought so.

  Me: I don’t get it.

  Nolan: If I want to see Dad I Have to go to Fla. Not happening.

  Me: Bummed?

  Nolan: Yes.

  Then my phone rang.

  “Yeah, I’m totally freaking bummed. I can’t believe he has to deal so much with Elaine’s shit. Can’t she go by herself?”
He sounded mad.

  “You would think. Did you tell him you were upset?”

  “If he can’t figure out I would be upset, then they should freaking take back his PhD.”

  “I’m sorry, Nolan.”

  “It’s okay, it’s just, I don’t know. Why would I want to go to Florida and stay in some old, deceased woman’s house?”

  “Wasn’t she your step-grandmother?”

  “Yes. I’m an asshole, I know, I just really wanted to go to my home in Pittsburgh and see Emme and just hang out.”

  “I get it.”

  “You do, how?” He sounded cold.

  “Maybe I don’t get it,” I said quietly.

  “I’m sorry, I’m just upset and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Rehearsal, where are you?”

  “Home, in my room. I’m studying. I just told my mother that I might not apply to Saint-Rémy.”

  “Whoa—wait—you are thinking about that?” His voice melted.

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow, Wren, that is, god, that is amazing.”

  “Well, my mother was rip-shit and I don’t think it’s going to go over well at all with my father.”

  “No, of course not. They want you to go, and there is a huge case for you to go, but…” He was quiet.

  “Nolan?”

  “I hope there is a case for you to stay. I mean, I really don’t want you to go…”

  I got up from my desk and went to my window seat. I looked into the sky to see if there were any stars—it gets dark so early in December. I saw an airplane that looked like a moving star, took a shaky breath in, and closed my eyes as if I was going to wish on it.

  “I don’t want to go either.”

  * * *

  Later that evening, my father said quite clearly that I would be making a detrimental, gigantic mistake if I didn’t apply. But he said he couldn’t make me do it, that ultimately it was my decision. I didn’t finish my self-portrait, and I didn’t make the deadline for Saint-Rémy. I had completed all the other required drawings, I had my portfolio in a JPEG, I had my recommendation from Mrs. Rousseau, and by a miracle (and I think because of that time I was grounded) I ended up getting a B average that semester, which is what you need to apply. The December 15 deadline eased on by like the mist outside my windows. Nolan had changed my mind about doing something I’d wanted to do with all my heart. That is the thing about love—for better or worse, it changes you. I know that is something no parent wants to hear. There is not a parent out there who can tolerate hearing their kid say, “Even though I got into the University of Success and Happiness, I’m going to defer and not go because of Mark/Madeline/David/Debbie/Troy/Una/Frank. I’m in love.” I think more people than you can imagine have changed the course of their lives because they were grabbed by love and thrown in another direction. And as not-strong as this sounds, I don’t think you have much control over it.