Keeping the Moon (19 page)

Norman sat me down in an old blue wing-back chair. It

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smelled like faded perfume, like roses, and I thought it must be strangely comforting for everything around you to have its own history.

"Okay," he said. "Look right here."

Behind my sunglasses, I wondered how he could tell where I was looking at all. He was sitting across the room on a milk crate, a sketchbook balanced on his lap. Next to him was a coffee can filled with pencils of various colors and sizes that he kept rummaging through, as if he couldn't find exactly what he wanted.

I realized that I was the only thing he was going to be focused on. I was grateful to have something to hide behind.

"Hold your chin up," he said, picking out a pencil and squinting at me. "Not that far. Okay, there. That's good. Stay just like that."

Already my neck was aching. But I didn't budge. Instead, I looked at Norman, almost as if for the first time.

I couldn't say exactly when it happened. Maybe when he bent over, looking up only occasionally, his dark brown eyes moving over and past me, taking me in glance by glance. Or when I watched his hands--which I'd seen flip burgers, capture cats, and cradle eggs, and even held, once--and how they seemed so different now, moving in slow, careful strokes, creating me. The sound of the pencil against paper was the only thing I could hear except for my own breathing. And I felt strange sitting there in front of him. As if he wasn't just Norman Norman, another lazy hippie, but a boy with deep brown eyes, watching me and maybe, if Isabel
had
been right, thinking--

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"Don't mess with your lip ring," he said quietly, his eyes still on the sketch pad, his thumb smudging a thick black line.

"I wasn't," I said automatically, embarrassed, as if he could read my mind.

It's just Norman, for God's sake.

He glanced up at me and for one panicked moment I thought I'd said it aloud. This time he didn't look back down at the sketch.

"Something's wrong," he said, still watching me.

"What?" I said, too quickly. "What is it?"

He stood up, putting the sketch pad aside, and crossed the short bit of carpet between us. I felt my stomach jump.

"Hold still," he said, leaning in, and then reached with one hand to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, his thumb brushing my cheek.

It was just one motion, one movement: it was, really, nothing. But as he went back to his sketch pad, I felt something rush in me, and, behind my sunglasses, closed my eyes. I could see him again in my head, leaning forward, eyes on me, one hand reaching out to touch my face.

"Chin up," he said. "Look right here, Colie."

I took a deep breath, settling myself. This was ridiculous. Mira would have said it was astrological, some crazy moon thing, the kind of celestial pull that drives women into labor and sets werewolves loose on the streets.

Yes, that was it. Just some crazy moon thing.

"Chin up," he said, smudging another line.

"Sorry."

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About thirty minutes had passed when behind me, suddenly, the phone rang. And rang. Three times.

"Do you want me to get that?" I asked.

"Nope."

"You sure?"

"Chin
up,
Colie."

The phone rang again. It was the old kind, a rotary, and
loud:
normally, I could hear it two floors up. Another ring, and then Norman's voice crackled over the answering machine.

He was still drawing, not even seeming to notice. There was a beep, and the machine was quiet. I thought whoever had called had hung up. Until I heard it: the sound of someone clearing his throat, as if he was about to say something.

Norman's eyes were focused on the page. The person cleared his throat again, and I watched as Norman lifted the pencil, holding it above the paper, as if waiting for something.

Click.
Then a dial tone. Norman went back to work.

We were silent for at least five minutes before I couldn't stand it anymore and asked, "Who was that?"

"What?"

"On the phone. Was that a prank call or something?" We'd gotten tons when the Kiki infomercial hit it big. My mother, for some reason, was also very popular with prisoners. "Does it happen a lot?"

"Chin up," he said, smudging another line. "Eyes right here."

I readjusted my position, jutting out my chin. "Aren't you even going to answer me?"

"No," he said mildly.

"You know, if it's a prank you can get something to trace it,"

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I said. It was hard to talk with my chin in the air. "It's not that hard--"

"I know who it is," he said quietly, tilting the sketchbook and pushing his hair out of his face.

"Really? Who?"

No answer.

"Norman."

He put down the sketchbook, dropping his pencil into the coffee can. "Look, Colie," he said, "don't you have some things you'd rather not talk about?"

He didn't say it in a mean way. But something in his tone made me feel like I was a lesser person for even asking.

"Yeah," I said softly. "I do."

"Then you understand, right?" I nodded as he stood up and dropped the sketchbook on the futon. "Okay, we're done here."

"Oh, come on, Norman," I said, knowing now that I had pushed too far. He was so
touchy.
"Don't get mad over that and--"

"No," he said, interrupting me. "I mean, we're
done.
With the sketch." He stretched his arms over his head, his fingers reaching towards the ceiling, a full-body stretch, like Cat Norman. "And we'll start the portrait tomorrow, at work. Okay?"

"Oh," I said. "Okay. But I get to see the sketch, right?"

"Nope."

"But Norman--"

"Good night, Colie."

I knew by now not to push my luck. Instead, I took off my sunglasses and got up, making my way past the mannequins and a stack of stained glass, to the door.

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When I glanced back, Norman was in the middle of his room, looking up at the protractor mobile. He stood there in the tiny amount of empty space, with all of his objects--bright and colorful--seeming to whirl around him. Now, I'd stepped inside too, and found to my surprise that I liked it there, in Norman's universe, an eclectic solar system that pulled things in, turned them around, and gave them a new life all their own.

We worked together every day, at the Last Chance during the slow parts of the late afternoon, and in the evenings in his room. The portrait had been important to me, but increasingly, so was Norman.

This, of course, was crazy. But ever since that first night, when he'd brushed my hair out of my face, something was different. Maybe not for him. But for me.

It was little things. Like the routine we'd set up whenever we worked, falling into place automatically without even talking. And I'd carved out a space for myself in his room: beside the chair where I posed at night I kept my sunglasses, the water glass he'd given me the first time I said I was thirsty, and the remote for the TV that he swore he never watched except when I was there. There was something nice about having
my
things, and I wondered if he looked at them after I'd gone and thought of me.

I was getting used to his crowded room. He had hung the two sunglasses paintings--Morgan and Isabel, and the man leaning against the car--side by side. I'd sit in my chair, looking through my own lenses as they stared back at me, completed, hanging where my own image would be soon. When I passed through

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Miras back room I found myself examining her portrait, too, reaching out to touch the bumpy surface, wondering what I'd look like when he finished.

The first morning I saw Norman at the Last Chance with paint splattered across his arm I got this strange feeling, some sense of possessiveness, like we shared a secret. I almost wished the sitting would never end.

Sometimes he seemed to be looking at me just for form, as if I was a bowl of apples or a landscape. But there were moments when I'd catch him leaning his head to the side, the paintbrush not even on the canvas, those deep brown eyes really watching me and then--

"Hey, Picasso!" an irritated Isabel would yell from inside the restaurant. "I need some onion rings. Now!"

"All right," Norman would say, putting down his brush. When it got busy he just stuck the canvas in the back of the car, folded up the easel, and went back to flipping burgers while I waited tables. When it slowed down we'd drift back outside and take up our places.

But he refused to show me the painting.

"Bad luck," he said the first time I asked. "You'll see it at the end."

"I want to see it now," I'd whine. This was one of our sticking points; like my mother, I had a hard time waiting for anything.

"Tough." Norman could play hardball when it suited him. "It's a mess now, anyway; it's all still process. The finished product is what matters."

Norman had his secrets. The phone rang almost every night

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when we were working, around the same time, 10:15. Norman never answered, and the man on the other end of the line never said a word. He just cleared his throat, as if waiting for someone else to make the first move.

I wanted to grab the phone, forcing the man--who I knew
had
to be Norman's father--to speak. But I couldn't. So I just sat there, night after night, gritting my teeth when it rang.

"Norman," I finally said to him,
"please
answer the phone. Please? For me?"

He shook his head before answering the same way he always did. "Chin up."

When we weren't arguing about the phone, we listened to music. I was--to my horror--almost beginning to appreciate his hippie bands. Or I turned on the TV and flipped through channels, watching shows until Norman vetoed them. One night I came across the Kiki infomercial and introduced Norman to the Buttmaster, FlyKiki inspirational tapes, and Stuffin' for Nothin'. I figured this was more than a fair trade for Phish and the Dead. Norman was intrigued. He even put down his brush to give his full attention to my mother's Super Cal Burn.

"She's really something," he said, as she bent and toned, whipping the studio audience into a frenzy.

"I know," I said. "Sometimes I can't even believe she's my mom."

"Oh, I can," he said easily, his eyes still on the TV. "I see a lot of her in you."

"No way."

"Yep." He picked up the brush, dipping it back into the paint.

This was new to me. "Like what?"

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"Chin up," he said, and I rolled my eyes. When I did, he continued. "Like your face: it's just like hers, heart-shaped. And the way you hold your hands when you talk, right at the waist. And the way you smile."

I looked at my mother, beaming on national TV "I don't smile like that," I said.

"But you do," he told me, dabbing at something on the canvas. "Look at her, Colie. That's not fake. On a lot of people it would be, but you can tell she loves what she does.
Loves
it."

I looked back at my mother, listening intently as some woman asked a question about how to get rid of saddlebags. He was right: with my mother, what you saw was what she felt.

"You know," he went on, "I think I knew you for about three weeks before I ever really saw you smile. And then, one day, Morgan said something and you laughed, and I remember thinking it was really cool because it
meant
something. You're not the kind of person who smiles for nothing, Colie. I have to earn
every
one."

I wasn't smiling now. In fact, I was pretty sure my mouth was hanging open
and
I was blushing. Norman ducked back behind the easel and I swallowed, trying to compose myself.

What was happening here? I wasn't even sure it was just in my head anymore.

"Chin up," he said, and I locked my eyes onto his, even as I imagined him leaning closer, tucking the hair behind my ear, again. I'd smile, then. No question. "Chin up."

"It's coming," Mira said to me one morning a few weeks later as we sat eating cereal: me, Grape-Nuts, her, Count Chocula.

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My days had narrowed to just work and the portrait, and breakfasts were the one time we still had together.

"What is?"

She picked up a folded newspaper and slid it across the table.

LOCAL MAN GROWS BIGGEST TOMATO ON RECORD, the headline

said.

"I don't understand," I said. "Tomatoes?"

"No, no, not that," she said, reaching over and pointing. "This!"

It was a small blurb at the bottom of the page, right beside the weather for the next day. There was a picture of the moon, and the words
"Full lunar eclipse scheduled to occur August fifteenth reaching totality at 12:32 A.M. If the night is clear it should be a perfect time for viewing.
"

"The eclipse," I said. "I forgot all about it."

"How could you?" she said, taking another spoonful of cereal. "Haven't you felt how weird things have been lately? I mean, the cosmos is getting ready to
freak
out. Big changes coming. I can't wait."

Big changes. I thought of Norman, then shook him out of my head. Ridiculous. "It's still a ways away," I said.

She turned to her calendar, flipping up the page. I could see the moon drawn in on the fifteenth, the day circled in purple pen. "Seventeen days and counting...."

"Seventeen days," I repeated. She went back to her paper, searching for the horoscope, happily eating her cereal. To her, change could only be a good thing.

I was thinking of this a few nights later at Norman's. We had the radio on, just enough to hear the music but not the words,

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and the door open. Out above the water, a half moon was hanging there, big and bright.

"Fourteen days," I said out loud.

"What?" Norman said, poking his head around the canvas.

"The eclipse. It's in fourteen days."

"Oh, yeah," he said. "That's right."

I sat back in the chair, lifting my chin before he asked me to. I was used to it now, the same way I was used to my days revolving around this one thing. I still went to work, and ran on the beach, and made my way through the maze of Mira's notes. But everything seemed like a means to get to this end, the portrait. We'd spent almost a month on it, Norman slowly constructing me on canvas as I memorized each part of him: the arch of his eyebrow, the way his shoulder blade jutted out when he stretched, the smell of turpentine on his skin whenever he crossed the room to adjust my position. I had started to dread the moments when he stopped painting, pausing with the brush in midair, as if at any second he would pronounce it finished and everything would be over.