Pack Up the Moon (13 page)

Wednesday, May 14, 2014
6 p.m.

I apologize if this is the last thing you want to think about but my six-year-old is really sick. She’s in a coma. The doctors say that it’s up to us when we want to take her off life support. I know that’s not what you went through, but I thought you might be able to help. To tell me how to feel. I don’t think I can kill my baby.

•   •   •

Nolan snapped his computer shut at the knock. He opened the door to find a camera and microphone pointed at him. A skinny man wearing an ill-fitting polyester jacket and under-eye concealer stood in front of him, so excited he was almost hopping.

The guy stuck his fist out to introduce himself. “Carey Pike, Channel 7 News. I managed to track you down as one of the people who saved Officer John Collins today, and we’d love to talk to you for a minute.”

The last time Nolan fought his way out from under the press’s interest, they were anything but polite, shouting at him as he held his hand to his face to cover his eyes.
How do you feel knowing your child’s last moments weren’t with his mother? How does it feel to be found guilty of criminally negligent homicide? How does it feel to kill your only child?

“You gotta be fucking with me.” Nolan was still off the record, right? The camera didn’t look like it was on. He pushed the barking Fred Weasley back. “Stop, Fred. Quit it.”

Pike looked amused. “No, sir. We love a good hero story.”

Didn’t he know? Surely reporters did at least a cursory Internet search when they went out to do an interview? “What’s your real angle?”

“Just that, sir. You’re with an Oakland Public Works crew, and you saved an officer who wouldn’t have made it today. Makes a nice piece, don’t you think?”

Nolan looked at his feet. “It’s all right. I guess. I was just doing what anyone else would do in my position.”

Pike’s face lit up. He was a young one, this guy. “Would you mind saying that again with the camera on?” He gestured to the man behind him. “Joe, you ready?”

Nolan stepped farther out onto his small porch, shutting the door so maybe Fred would quit barking already. The apartment where he lived was arranged like one of the old sixties motels, but there was no inner courtyard, just doors that faced their small parking lot. The manager, Sammy, had done what he could with flowers in halves of wine barrels, but he had also been MIA for the last three months while he recovered from open-heart surgery, and the plants were showing it. Some were spindly, and some were all the way dead, unhappy with the rainwater that was all the nourishment they got. Nolan had felt sad for them before, but now felt only embarrassment. This wasn’t a good idea. What if Kate saw him on TV? What if she saw where he lived?

But it was too late. The bright light was in his eyes, and Pike held the microphone at the ready.

“I’m here with Nolan Monroe, who just hours ago saved the life of a man important to our community. Officer John Collins is well respected on the Oakland police force and has been with the department for twenty-two years. He’s served on SWAT and Vice, and three years ago made the news when he was stabbed while stopping a rape in progress. Hailed as a hero by many, Officer Collins has a new hero tonight. Nolan, we understand that you found the officer unmoving by his car?”

So far it was okay. “Yeah.” Nolan nodded.

“What did you think had happened?”

“I thought he might be having a heart attack.” So much for excitement in journalism. Nolan knew he sounded lackluster, but wasn’t sure what he should do about it. Jumping up and down as if he were winning an award didn’t seem like it would be a great idea. He settled for pasting a semblance of a smile on his face. “So I started CPR.”

“This was after you used the officer’s own radio to alert emergency personnel of your position.”

“I, um. Yeah.”

“Did anyone help you?”

The reporter knew the answer to that, Nolan was sure. He remained silent.

“You did CPR on him for how long before the paramedics arrived?”

“I don’t know. Maybe four minutes? Five?”

Pike looked at the camera. “Five minutes can mean the difference between life and death. And that’s something that Nolan Monroe knows intimately, don’t you, sir? Three years ago, Nolan was convicted of criminal negligent homicide, killing his son, and almost taking his own life in the process of asphyxiation by carbon monoxide in their Oakland home just a few miles from here.”

Shit
. Nolan took a step back, but the camera swiveled to his face and followed him. “Get out.”

“How long did the paramedics perform CPR on you, Nolan? The report says twelve minutes. They shocked you twice. They were the heroes that day, saving your life even if they couldn’t save your son’s. Do you feel like what you did today evens the score a little bit?”

This was a nightmare. A bloodbath. “I was just there—I told you.”

“You were there because you work on the roads, right? Picking up trash? You used to be a corporate lawyer, is that correct?”

Nolan managed to squeeze the door shut then, kicking out Pike’s boot with his own, twisting both locks into place.

His breathing was heavy. Fred panted next to him. For a second, Nolan imagined reopening the door and repeating to the reporter what he’d heard in his head for the first two years, and still heard, every morning and night:
I should be dead. I should be dead.
It was the refrain that his blood sang in the morning when he woke, that his breathing echoed when he slept. He shouldn’t be here now, and he shouldn’t have been on the side of the road earlier that day when Officer Collins fell, and when Pike knocked tonight, no one should have been there to answer the door.

Nolan was living a dead man’s life, and the pain of it was almost enough to kill him all over again. Almost, but not quite. It would be worse later, when the piece aired. When the guys found out. He’d known it was probably a matter of time, but he’d hoped anyway, hoped outrageously that he’d never be found out. That people he cared about would never look at him that way again.

Tears would hurt less than this perpetually sucked-in breath, he knew that—kind of like when you had the stomach flu and puking was the only thing that made you feel better. But he was saving them up for when he really needed them. He would bet that man who wrote him tonight about his little girl was storing them up, too, or at least he hoped he was. Nolan opened the computer and reread the e-mail.

It was still there. And in the time the computer had been closed, another had come in. Shorter and badly spelled, it carried the same sentiment.

How do u know its time? Once I put my dog down, but he told me with his eyes it was time. My boy keeps his eyes cloesed now.

Nolan wanted to answer them.

He couldn’t, though. He had no way to help. There was nothing he could say that could ease the pain of a parent losing a child, and god knew he wasn’t going to assist another parent to kill their child.

But what if the kid was for all intents and purposes already gone? Where did someone else presume to step in? To give advice? Shit, what would he have given back then for an answer that was true?

Anything. He’d have given anything, and everything—all he had, and then he would have stolen more to give if he’d had to. If only someone would have answered him.

The space in his throat just under his tongue felt like it was closing, and Nolan swallowed convulsively. Any day now, the tears would break free and the resulting flood would wash away everything he’d built up, would wash away Fred Weasley and his apartment and his beat-up Honda and the only photo of Robin he still had, dog-eared and tucked into the back of his wallet. It would all be gone in the rushing salt water, all of it, gone. And the easiest goddamn thing to lose would be himself.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014
6:30 p.m.

T
he nervous energy burned in Kate’s hands, flaring from her elbows, combusting at her wrists. She moved through the house, touching things as if she could imbue each item with specialness, with clear and obvious originality. This lamp, this couch, this chair—would Pree like them? Would she hate them? Would Pree expect a bohemian artist’s studio, inspiration filtering in at the windows? Would she be disappointed to find instead a sturdy suburban home in which the Costco toilet paper was waiting in the hallway to be put away? Would she walk in and then immediately turn on her heel and leave after seeing that Kate’s bills were piled on the end of the kitchen countertop, their paper edges splashed carelessly with coffee? There was so much to
do.
Kate had broken a glass in the sink yesterday and had left it there, unable to start the process of cleaning it up, but it would be unforgivable if Pree got cut on the glass just because Kate was careless. (Of course, when Kate
did
try to clean it up, she nicked her careless, restive hands not once but three times on the slivers.)

She brushed her teeth once more, still trying to rid herself of the taste of the police officer’s mouth. God. It had been so different, so much more work, blowing into a full-grown man’s lungs. The sound had been the same, though, air whistling into a desperate vacuum.

She was still staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, unseeing, when the doorbell rang, shattering the silence.
Pree
.

Pree stood on the porch, the darkness of the evening folded around her narrow shoulders. Her eyes, caught in the dim porch light, looked miserable, but then the girl brightened as if on cue. So young. How could this girl be twenty-two? If she couldn’t see Nolan’s ears, her own eyebrows, she’d wonder if this was the right girl on her stoop. “Hi . . . hi there.”

No, even as young-looking as Pree was, this was Kate’s daughter, no doubt. That voice was Robin’s voice, always rusty as if it weren’t used often.

“Come in,” said Kate. Should she display how happy she was? How eager she was to see her? Or should she play it cool? Was that even possible? Feeling overcome by indecision, Kate stepped backward into the living room and let Pree follow her.

They sat, both carefully formal. Kate crossed her legs at the ankle; Pree crossed hers at the knee.

“So, how are you?” said Kate, but her words rang strangely, and she had no follow-up line. Her eyes fell to the carpet. She should have at least vacuumed. “Are you hungry? I have some chicken we can grill . . .”

Instead of answering, Pree bounced again to her feet and moved to the window. She frowned, and then cupped her hands to the glass, peering out into the dark. “Is that . . . ?”

“What?”

“Is that a bathtub down there? On the hill?”

Kate smiled. Of all things, she noticed that. “Yeah.”

“But . . . it’s out there. Outside.”

“No one can see.”

“
I
can see.”

“But we’re the only house that can see it. These are the only windows that look through the trees at it.”

“So you think. There’s a satellite up there with your name on it.”

It was funny, Nolan had always said the same thing, only he’d laughed and said he’d commissioned the satellite’s cameras.

Pree turned, shoving her hands in her jeans pockets, and she changed the subject abruptly. “So I had a brother?” Her eyes, the same pale blue as Robin’s, bored into Kate.

The Internet told all. It was inevitable. Kate should have known, should have tried to beat the world to the punch and told her herself as soon as they’d met. But she hadn’t. “You did.”

“Did we have the same father? I read you married your high school sweetheart, so . . .”

This was the time to tell her.
Yes, Nolan is your father . . .
A spot under her ribs felt compressed, as if a fist were squeezing her heart, pushing words into her lungs and then out. If she told Pree, she’d have to admit the whole truth to Nolan, too, that she’d had his child. While she and Nolan had been apart during the college years, she’d never felt guilty about not telling him, not tracking him down.
He
was the one who’d left. He didn’t deserve to know she’d given away a baby.

But when he’d come back into her life . . . As it was, she hoped she could just tell Nolan she’d had
a
child while they were apart. Not
his
child. Just a random one (as if there was such a thing). Then she could work up to the rest of the truth. She could take her time, make it right. She had to keep the plates spinning for a little longer, that was all. Black spots danced at the edges of her peripheral vision, a darkness made of fear. “No. Different fathers.” The lie burned in her chest, pulsed with heat. She only said it to give herself some more time to think, and even as she spoke, she had to keep herself from reaching forward to snatch the words back to herself. The phrase broke into shards, more dangerous than simple broken glass.

Pree blinked. “So he was my half brother.”

“Yes.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong . . .

“And his father . . . killed him?”

The word was so sharp. It was appropriate, but it cut Kate. “I’m sure you read all about it. It’s all out there.”

“But it’s not the same as hearing it from . . .” Pree trailed off on the last word.

“From your biological mother.”

Pree rocked back and forth inside her thick black boots, as if the energy inside her couldn’t be contained. “I hate it when people say that. Biological. As if that’s all there is to it.”

“But—”

“You’re my
biological
mother. What that makes it sound like is that you made a baby and gave it away, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Some people would say that’s true.”

“But it’s bullshit!” Pree’s voice broke, just as Robin’s always had when he was angry. “You gave me your DNA. Your body is encoded in mine. We share genes. I think the way you do. I act the way you do, in ways we don’t even know about. We’re both artists, and I didn’t even know that about you. I share the same with my father, whoever he is. Yeah, it’s biological, but it’s so much more than that, and I would have really,
really
liked to know my brother.” The clear green in Pree’s voice shimmered, like heat waves over asphalt.

“I would have liked that, too. I wish you had.”

Pree tilted her head and looked at Kate.

I don’t get to make wishes.
“I’m sorry.”

“Who is my father?”

Fear would burn its way through her, leaving only a dried-out husk. Old lies. New ones. “Greg Jenkins.” Greg was the boy she’d been dating at Cal when Nolan transferred in. When Nolan found her. And with a name like that—there had to be a million Greg Jenkinses in the world, if and when Pree googled him . . .

“Who’s he?”

Greg had meant exactly nothing to her. They ate pizza together and saw movies a couple of times. There was a brew pub incident that remained thankfully hazy in Kate’s memory, though she thought it had been the culmination of too many garlic fries followed by a clove cigarette after one too many beers. Greg had liked her very much, and Kate had planned to like him more, and when Nolan came back she completely forgot about that intention. Greg meant more to her in this moment, saying his name to Pree, than he ever had before. “He was sweet. Pretty blue eyes like a girl.” This was true.

Pree touched her eyelashes. “Where is he now?”

Kate shrugged, her heart racing as she realized she would
have
to say more. Somehow, she’d thought for a second that the name would be enough. “I don’t know.” This was also true.

“What does he do?”

He’d friended her on Facebook two years before. Robin was dead then, and Nolan was in jail—she’d ignored the request, just as she’d shut everyone else out, and now she regretted that choice. “I have no idea.”

“Do you know his birthday? I need to find him. Obviously.”

Find him? She and Greg had had sex only twice (Greg eager, Kate surprised at her own ambivalence). If she found him, he wouldn’t believe he had a daughter. Nor
should
he. It was untrue. And even while she knew she had to fix everything she’d broken and confess, Kate couldn’t make her mouth shape the words. Instead, leaning into the fear and hoping to find the right words, the solution, she said, “You can’t. I never told him.”

“You never told my father you were pregnant with me?”

Also true, heartbreakingly true. Maybe truth could be snuck up on, rounded up in the back of the house under the washing machine, clubbed on the head and dragged to the living room later when she felt stronger. Kate shook her head.

“And you don’t know how to get hold of him?”

Another shake of her head.

Pree bit her bottom lip, which was suddenly quivering. “That’s okay. I have mad Google-fu.”

It was such a lightweight statement for the despair in her eyes. “I’m sorry. Maybe we can work on it together.”
Never.

Then Pree was crying, swiping angrily at her eyes with her fingers. Eyeliner ran down her right cheek, and Kate felt relief flood her chest. Tears she understood. Tears she knew. Kate stood and gathered Pree to her. Her daughter was bony, all protuberances and sharp points.

Kate’s arms rose around her, and she felt the knobs at Pree’s shoulders.

Where her wings would be.

Pree’s tears soaked through Kate’s thin T-shirt at her neck, and still she cried. For long minutes they stood there together. Five, maybe six. Then, when the tears dried and Pree started sniffling, moving her feet in an embarrassed postcry shuffle. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where all that came from.”

Kate made a flapping gesture. “Are you kidding? Some days it’s all I do.”

Hic
. “This is going to sound weird . . .”

“Tell me.”

“No, it’s a question,” said Pree.

Kate’s heart fluttered. “Okay.”

“Can I take a shower here?”

Surprise felt like joy. “Yes! Of course.”

“I just, I mean . . . I just want to wash off the day.” Pree blinked and wiped smudged mascara off the back of her hand.

Then Kate asked what she’d longed to ask for so long, even before she’d met the person she’d ask it of. “Do you want to stay? I have ice cream for dessert and a spare room.”

Wednesday, May 14, 2014
11 p.m.

•   •   •

Kate’s bedroom was next to Robin’s—no, Pree’s—room. She’d spent so long untraining her listening ear that it was difficult to hear if Pree was moving around. Was she asleep? Did she like the Harry Potter walls, really? Or had that just been something she said (who wouldn’t exclaim in surprise at being confronted with a towering painted Hogwarts)? Was she comfortable? Was the bed too small? Too soft?

Kate lay still, willing her breath to be silent. Over the beating
shump-shump
of her heart, she felt a splinter of unexpected pain as she thought she heard a floorboard creak, the same board that had always given Robin away as he crept out to peek in on his parents. But no noise followed that one, and Kate’s heart slowly calmed.

Since Robin died, no one but Kate had ever spent the night in their home (first Nolan had been in the hospital, then in a hotel, then in prison). No, that wasn’t true. Her friend Dierdre had stayed one night. She’d come over three days after Robin’s death. She’d planted herself in the red armchair in the living room and said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I can’t,” started Kate, exhausted by the thought of making her friend comfortable.

“I’m not here to talk to you, to feed you, or to do anything but be in this room.” Dierdre picked up a magazine (
Parents
, Kate noted dully) and flipped the pages. “Nothing you say can make me leave. I love you. Now go do your thing and feel free to ignore me. I’ll just be here.”

Kate had ignored her as long as she could, and then late that night, she’d found herself lying on the couch with her head in Dierdre’s lap. Her friend had stroked her hair and cried with her and had then put her to bed, holding her hand until she slept. Kate sent her home kindly in the morning. She was grateful to Dierdre but not willing to indulge herself again with that kind of comfort.

Kate’s mother, Sonia, was almost as brokenhearted as Kate was. Robin had repaired some of the broken pieces in his grandmother (they’d shared that love of the water—their sealskin, Kate called it) but when he died, the work came undone. Sonia did her best, Kate knew that. She dropped by with food, simple, bland things that could slip down without burning Kate’s tear-locked throat. She sat next to her in the trial, and never once said a cruel word about Nolan, even though Kate could see the words simmering on her lips. And Sonia had never spent the night, had never tried to. She knew better, understood more about grief. When Sonia had died two years after Robin, Kate had been astonished at how the shades of pain were similar when she closed her eyes—Robin, her mother—deep, bruised blues marred by cadmium trails that flared angry green where they met.

Now Kate took a deep breath and rolled onto her back. She looked up at the blank ceiling, tracing the crack that ran from the wall to the ceiling fan with her eyes.

Not even the accountant Kate had dated for three months earlier in the year had ever been allowed to stay the night. She’d met him in line at the library, a safe enough place, she supposed, to meet someone. At least he read. She’d slept at his place twice, long, uncomfortable nights during which she missed the breath, the air of her own home. Esau’s place had smelled like new leather shoes and roasted garlic, and he liked the windows closed at night for safety—Kate had felt, each night, as if someone were holding a towel over her mouth. She’d hated rebreathing the warm, stuffy, used-up air.

Esau had been sweet, though. He’d been exactly what Kate had thought she’d needed: a quiet distraction, some physical companionship. She liked his strong, broad arms (so different from Nolan’s rather thin ones), and he always brought her gerbera daisies—her favorite flower. She loved them for their showy hardiness. Their sloppy messiness. They reminded her of herself, the way she used to be when she could still handle big things, before her bones had taken on this unbearable breakable feeling.