Laughing Down the Moon (19 page)

“Hey, did you say ‘two thirteen-year-olds’ when you were talking about your brother?” I asked, my mind wandering back to her soundtrack story. “Are you twins?”

“Yeah, we are. Don’t look a thing like each other—he’s blond with brown eyes—but we’re twins,” Shiloh said.

“Does he live here in Minneapolis?”

“Yeah, he’s married to a woman, and they have three adorable kids. He’s a good guy.”

“Is he…can he still see?” I hoped that question wasn’t callous or hurtful, but how strange would it be if he also lost his vision—then again, how strange if he hadn’t lost his vision.

“Yes, he can see.” The tone of Shiloh’s voice let me know that my question was not hurtful. “As far as we know, he doesn’t have any sign of retinitis-pigmentosa. Thank goodness.”

“That’s good,” I said, without thinking. Then I thought, oops. “I mean…” I didn’t know what I meant except that I had just implied that being blind was bad. Well, it was, wasn’t it? Or it was at least harder than having sight.

“It’s all right, I know what you mean. It is good that he can see,” Shiloh responded.

“Shiloh, if someone created a soundtrack for your life,” I started to ask, needing to change the subject so I could not worry about stepping on my tongue as I spoke, “what songs would you want on it?”

“Hmm, good question…I’m hoping this is not going to be played at my wedding,” we both laughed at her comment, “but is it a funeral-type soundtrack? Do you mean when all is said and done, what do I want played, or do you want to know what songs would sum it up today?”

“Uhm…” I didn’t really know, so I went with the present. “How about if we went up to today?” I said but wondered why she wouldn’t want it played at her wedding. Were the songs that embarrassing? Was she referring to the surprise soundtrack at her sister’s ceremony? Or was she so anti-commitment that she knew she’d never want a wedding of her own?

“Okay,” she said and then was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, she sounded absolutely certain that she had her answers right. “I’d want ‘Shiloh’ by Neil Diamond, for obvious reasons, even though it’s sort of a sad, ironic song. And I’d want the good old ‘Barracuda’ by Heart for its hard-driving beat and danger.” She laughed at herself. I didn’t join in this time because I was too enthralled with her. “How many do I get?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, “I think you can have as many as you want.” My gracious answer probably gave away the fact that I’d give her anything she wanted at this point, and that made me feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. What the heck was happening here?

“Sweet, so I’ll choose one more, a really big headliner for my soundtrack, okay? And then I want to hear yours,” she said, her voice gentle.

“Okay,” I said.

“So for my one really important one, the one that would sit on top of the heap today, I’d want ‘Home’ even though it’s kind of folksy and down-homeish,” Shiloh said.

Her statement sounded more like a question with the way she expectantly raised the tone of her voice on the last words. It was as if she were looking for a reaction from me. I couldn’t place the song right away, so I wracked my brains for lyrics with the phrase “home” in them. There were so many songs with that word, but the one I knew the lyrics to was by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros with the lyrics that went something like, “…Home, yes I am home, home is wherever I’m with you.” My heart gave an almighty lurch in my chest. It was a love song. I half hoped she meant a different song because this one made me think of how very entangled and dependent two people can become. And how very broken a home can feel when the relationship finally collapses. Maybe her song was a different “home.” Maybe it wasn’t dedicated to me, but I wasn’t sure what to do with the simultaneous dread and hope that I experienced when I thought it might be for me.

“By Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros?” I asked.

“Yep, do you know it?” Shiloh asked back. She sounded cautious but like she was smiling.

“I do.” Ugh! Did I really just say I do?

“Good, now let’s hear your soundtrack!” Shiloh was impatient to move from her soundtrack to mine, I think, but I couldn’t do it. My mind was throwing an unholy fit, and I suddenly needed to get off the phone before my head exploded into bits and pieces all over the place. I couldn’t let this be a repeat of me and Mickey where I get attached to Shiloh, Shiloh changes for the worse and gets pissed at me when I want things the way they used to be when we first met, and eventually Shiloh dumps me. Then I’m left alone, with no edges to snag on to anything worthwhile in life.

“Uhm, Shiloh, I have to go.” I knew I sounded somewhat desperate to hang up. For a second I worried that she might feel like she’d scared me away, but truth be told, she had. For now, just for right now, I was scared. Terrified. I panicked. Without waiting for her response, I hung up.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Learning

I pulled the now flannel-like sheet of paper from my coat pocket for the third time. I unfolded it and looked over the notes on writing I had made for Cami’s English Eleven class. Whose idea was this anyway? The topics that might amuse the high school students now seemed overly idealistic. Why wasn’t I going to really tell them how it was? Nowhere on the paper did I mention how nerve-wracking it was to wait for rejection notices, or how rattling it was to have a piece accepted only to have it be rendered pretty much unrecognizable by an editor. Maybe I should start with these humdrum details and save the good stuff for last. I could end with how it feels to have someone you run into comment on your article and tell you how it helped them figure out a bit of their life. Or how exquisite it is to play with words, arranging them into patterns like boxcars that no other train conductor has ever connected before. On second thought, that might be a good place to start, seeing as how this was an English class after all.

You know who would amaze the kids? Shiloh. Wouldn’t it blow their minds to know that you don’t even have to be able to
see
to write a publishable article or novel? Maybe it wouldn’t, seeing as how this generation had grown up with technology that swiftly adapted itself to each individual’s needs. The students might not be overly impressed that one could tell the computer what to write, or type it in if the person knew the keyboard already, have the words read back with punctuation read aloud and then tell the computer how to revise and edit, all without ever seeing the keyboard or the finished product.

I jumped as the bell sounded in the office where I was waiting for Cami to come pick me up and walk me to her classroom.

“Horrible sounding things, aren’t they?” asked an auburn-haired woman typing away at a computer behind the front counter. She looked at me through big glasses, which she shoved back up the bridge of her nose with the back of one hand.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It must take a while to get used to them.”

“I can’t really remember getting used to them, that was a few years ago, but I’ll tell you, sometimes I wish I had them at home,” she said, shaking her head. “If I had them at home, I think I’d get more done. And I’d get more out of my kids, I bet.”

“Really? Like how?” I asked.

“Well, here I work on attendance until the fourth bell, then I work on lunch accounts until one more bell rings, and then it’s a hodgepodge of random computer things, you know, entering field trips, scheduling substitute teachers, stuff like that. So if I could do the same at home, I’d watch TV until the second bell, make dinner until the third bell, eat at the fourth, and the kids could do dishes at the fifth…see what I mean?” she asked.

I liked her idea. I was a writer who didn’t have to follow an hour-by-hour schedule, so a bell system could probably help me out with time management. I was going to tell her so, but just then I saw Cami through the office’s glass door. For school she’d done away with the clingy sweater and yoga pants. Today she was wrapped in an artsy beige velvet jacket with raglan sleeves and rose-colored jeans. Less revealing of her athletic form, but still flattering. She came in, hugged me, said hello, grabbed me by my elbow and whisked me away. All I had time for was to say thank you with a wave goodbye to the woman behind the desk.

Cami’s classroom was bright with fluorescent lights blasting down from the ceiling and daylight streaming in through the windows. Student work covered the walls. A buzzing swarm of teenagers entered the room behind us. A few of them looked me up and down, probably assessing whether or not I had anything good to offer them. I hoped I did, as I hopped up on the stool in front of the room where Cami told me to make myself comfortable as she introduced me.

I shared my story of how I got into writing—I had a crush on my English 101 instructor and the only other courses offered by that instructor were a journalism course and a creative writing course, so before you could say “fraternization” I had signed up for both. At first the students weren’t sure whether or not they should laugh at my story until Cami burst out in a guffaw. Then the students felt comfortable following suit. Once they laughed the first time, I felt encouraged, so I went on, keeping them laughing almost the entire hour.

Near the end of the class, I asked them if they had any questions and pretty girl with braids and an angular face raised her hand. She wanted to know if I had ever had any embarrassing typos make it into my published articles or column and who got in trouble for a mistake like that—me or my editor. I told her about the time my article’s title ran as “Breast Features of The New Year’s Technology” and the time when “Deathalyzers: Saving Lives” showed up in the magazine. The students laughed, and I felt like a rock star. Their energy was so clear and vital that it made me happy to be there with them. Another student raised his hand and asked who got in trouble for those typos. I had forgotten to answer the second half of the girl’s question. This guy was gently reminding me so that the girl’s inquiry didn’t go unanswered. How nice was that? I told him that we both took the heat, to some degree, but that it was
my
name printed under the title, so I was the one who had the most to lose. The students nodded soberly, considering what I had told them. I felt I should drive home the point of doing your best work always, despite having an editor on most articles.

“You know,” I began, “having an editor is like having a net under you as you perform on a tightrope. You know he or she is there, but you hope that you never have to rely on her to save you, you know?” They nodded. “Most editors are happy to help catch grammatical errors, and nobody dies if you misspell a word or if you miss a period, but—”

“Ha,” I was interrupted by a student voice, “at my house somebody dies if I miss a period!” There was absolute silence in the room until I burst out laughing. That was really clever! I said so, and the rest of the class started laughing, too. Cami told the student that shouting out was rather disrespectful, but that she recognized it was almost too funny to not point out. Then the bell rang. The students applauded and thanked me, gathered up their backpacks and notebooks and poured out into the hallway.

I listened to my voice mails as I walked through the parking lot to my car.

“Hi Allura, it’s Shiloh.” When I heard Shiloh’s voice I stopped walking. Passion and affection cemented me in place. How could I let myself get this emotionally connected to a woman I barely knew? And why did I find myself wanting to get even more emotionally, not to mention physically, connected to her despite knowing how badly it hurt to be dumped by a person you trusted and loved? This was crazy.

“Sorry if I scared you with that soundtrack thing.” Shiloh’s voice sounded canned as it emanated from the tiny speaker in my cell phone. She continued, “I didn’t mean to put any pressure on you—I just like that song…anyway, give me a call when you have a minute. Bye!”

The song thing did have me questioning where I wanted this to go. I’d call her back later, after my heart had a day or two to rest.

Once at home, I busied myself with tidying up and going through the mail. I saved my mom’s postcard for last—something to look forward to. This one had a huge orange sun sinking into the desert.

Dear Allura Tuki Satou,

My Dear—what the hell is this dried-up root thing in Gladys’ wheel-well storage? It looks like one of your witchy doohickeys. Can I cook with it? Tired of takeout.

Love, Mom

She had found the comfrey from the Home Goodbye and Relocation Protection spells. I smiled and hoped she put it back into its place in their RV.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Resolutions

Mickey tapped her fingertips on the tabletop but I didn’t recognize the beat. She arranged and then rearranged the salt and pepper shakers and the drink menu. Her small hands unfolded and then refolded her linen napkin. Her nerves must have been absolutely jangled because I had very rarely seen her fidget. That was usually my hobby, not hers. But today for some reason, my nerves were rock solid. I was not nervous about seeing Mickey.

Her short silver and black hair still had its tiny spiky bangs, she still dressed in tailored clothing that was more masculine than feminine and she still balanced the mannish style with her favorite pale pink shirt beneath her black sports coat. Her nose was pert as ever and her rosy apple cheeks buoyed her serious dark brown eyes. In fact, sitting across the table from Mickey was akin to putting on my favorite old sweatshirt. Recognized, comfortable. This surprised me because before seeing her I had felt so reluctant.

We met at the Loring Pasta Bar because it was midway between my house and her new apartment. But the real reason I had agreed to the venue was because we had never been there together. Mickey had suggested several places where we had gone in the past, but I was not interested in revisiting history. Veronica had advised me to perform a protection ritual to ward off any negative energy I might be subjected to. I hadn’t felt as if I’d need it, so I didn’t. In hindsight, it may have been a good idea to do one.