Pack Up the Moon (15 page)

“Right. It can’t be just anyone.”

Nolan pursed his lips as if he were going to whistle. “I bet I can find two people completely in love to be our witnesses.”

That
was better. “They have to be as in love as we are.”

“Naturally.”

“What do you get?” she asked.

He thought for a moment. “You have to tell me your biggest secret.”

That was the last thing she could do. “What makes you think I have any?”

“You do.” He cleared his throat. “Sometimes I can almost see it.”

Uneasy, Kate shifted in her seat. She fit her hand into his and leaned against his shoulder, keeping her eye on the city as it unrolled toward them. “A couple as in love as we are. That’s going to be hard to find. Probably impossible.”

“That’s what makes it fun.”

•   •   •

Despite the cool spring weather outside, the air conditioner was on full blast at the House of Eternal Love and Friendship. The chaplain, Roy, wore a black puffy coat over his “clerical” garb, a cheap-looking dark polyester robe and white collar crookedly affixed. Kate shivered.

“You need witnesses? My employee”—he gestured to the girl who couldn’t be more than eighteen filing her nails in a side room—“and me can do that. Fifty extra dollars. No charge if she cries.”

“She cries?” Alarmed, Kate looked up from the papers on the counter in front of them. “Is that normal?”

“She’s good at it. A nice tip doesn’t hurt, though.”

Nolan signed one page and slid it to Kate. “We don’t want her to cry. We’ll have our own witnesses.”

“Where?” The chaplain peered around them as if their witnesses were hiding somewhere.

“How much time do we have?”

Roy glanced at his oversized watch. “Thirty minutes, fast wedding, you can be back here in twenty and we’ll still get it done.”

Kate heard Nolan give his nervous giggle, and it infected her. “Speed wedding,” she said. “Let’s get married lots. Next time, we’ll do it on ice skates.”

As they left the chapel, Nolan said, “Over Niagara Falls in a barrel.”

“Skydiving from a helicopter.”

“Underwater in scuba gear,” he said, ushering her to the right on the crowded sidewalk, pointing out a bench.

“Mile twenty-five of a marathon.”

He raised his eyebrows at her and pulled out a red handkerchief that had come with his new suit, using it to dust off the seat for her. “I’m not so into the marathon idea.”

“Okay. Triathlon.”

“We can discuss it.”

Kate arranged her dress—an outrageous red cocktail dress from a boutique in the hotel. It was knee-length, covered in sequins and small burgundy bugle beads. It clacked quietly as she moved, and the weight was delicious on her shoulders. She felt like a gaudy flapper and wished she had a cigarette holder even though she’d never smoked. Nolan wore a red suit made of some shiny material that gleamed in the cool sunlight. “You kind of look like a pimp,” she noted.

“Fantastic! That’ll make finding people that want to help us out even easier!” He sat next to her. “Hey—” He nudged her. “How about them?” He nodded toward a young couple strolling hand in hand toward them. The man wore an oversized white T-shirt that read “GUMMY” and the woman’s bangs were three inches tall.

“Divorce pending,” Kate said.

The couple paused to kiss.

“Cynic,” said Nolan. “Why?”

“You see her bag? Coach. Easy three hundred. And look at his shirt. Thrift store central.”

“You don’t know that.”

“He bought a new pink T-shirt that says ‘GUMMY’? On purpose?” She wrinkled her nose. “Won’t last two years.”

“Okay.” Nolan sat back.

The parade of humanity in front of them looked like a mixture of every part of America—every race, gender, social class. Prostitutes on heels higher than the Stratosphere roller coaster wobbled by, followed by women leading tiny dogs dressed in couture. Couples of all compositions strolled past, and although some looked very happy, none were exactly right.

“What about them?” said Nolan.

Both the man and the woman carried weight around their middles, and their steps were tired. They were pale, with forearms and cheeks stained bright pink by too much sun. Even in the cool air, they sweated through their matching “Vegas Baby” T-shirts. They held hands and walked with their gazes up at the tall, flashing buildings that lined the Strip.

“No,” said Kate. “No one from Michigan.”

“You don’t know that. And why are you prejudiced against a whole state?”

“I’m not. It was just fun to say.”

As the couple walked past, the woman cast a longing eye at the bench. There was a space next to Nolan, but not a very big one.

He jumped to his feet. “Would you like to sit?”

“Oh, gracious,” she huffed. “Bill? Do you mind?”

Bill shook his head. “Of course I don’t mind. Sit as long as you want. We’ll call a cab if you get too tired.”

“I’m not too tired. I’m still just so excited.” She smiled cheerfully at Kate and Nolan, and a gap between her front teeth made her face look sweet and less exhausted. “Newlyweds, you know.” Kate felt a flutter of surprise—they had to be in their late fifties, and they fit so well together she’d assumed they’d been together forever. “We’re having the
best
time. Where are you from?”

“California. Bay Area,” said Kate. “What about you?”

“Detroit.” She held her purse on her lap as if it were a large sack of salt. It looked like it might actually physically hurt her to hold it, and Kate was opening her mouth to ask if she wanted to set it on the bench between them when the man, Bill, stepped forward.

“Let me hold your purse, love.” He took the brightly colored bag and held it easily in front of him, rocking on his heels. “There. That’s better. She’s had the cancer, you know. She’s getting better but I still like to baby my Diane. How long you kids been together?”

“Since high school—” started Nolan.

“Since college,” corrected Kate. “Three years.”

Diane confided, “Us two met in our twenties but it took till we were both divorced and I was sick for us to finally get it right. I finally got my football star.”

Bill smoothed his thinning hair, grinning while he wiped the sweat from his brow. “And I finally got my beauty queen.”

A look passed between them, and Kate felt its warmth wash over her. She met Nolan’s eyes. He nodded.

•   •   •

There was no Elvis, not even on the chapel stereo. They asked for Etta James, not Pachelbel.

“Do you take this woman to be your wedded wife? To have—”

“I do,” said Nolan. The chaplain fixed him with a glare.

“To have and to hold, from this—”

“I do, I do, I
do
.”

Bill and Diane, standing to either side of them, laughed. “I think he does, Preach,” said Bill. Diane clutched her spindly bouquet of daisies tighter to her chest. Goose bumps rose on Kate’s arms.

“I do,” Nolan said again for good measure.

The chaplain gave up and looked at Kate. “What about you? Same thing?”

“I do!” Without waiting, Kate put her arms around Nolan’s neck and held on as if he might fly away, taking her away with him. She kissed him, hard, so he would know.

Against her mouth, he whispered, “Now tell me that secret.”

“I missed you every moment we were apart.” It was true, even if it wasn’t a secret, and Nolan wrapped his arms around her even tighter. Kate heard the click of Diane’s camera behind her.

She hadn’t needed momentous. She hadn’t even wanted romantic. But Kate got both, all, everything, and she felt stunned by the brightness of the future suddenly spread out beneath them. And if Nolan ever did sprout those wings she suspected were there, just underneath his skin, if he ever flew away, she knew one thing: she would hold tight to his neck and wrap her legs around his body, sticking with him no matter what.

Thursday, May 15, 2014
8 a.m.

P
ree should have called Flynn the night before. It had just been so easy to turn the cell phone ringer off, to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep in a strange bed under the open window, the sound of a large house breathing quietly around her. In the morning, the light that slanted through the blinds hit the walls at an angle she didn’t recognize. The blue comforter smelled too plasticky, as if it were new, but she liked the smell of the room underneath it, real and like . . . a home. Something about the scent reminded her of her old room at the moms’ house. Pree wanted to stay, and she wondered briefly if that was part of Kate’s plan: to trick her into never leaving. She couldn’t decide how much she would mind. There were worse things.

She stretched and reached for her phone, resting in sunlight on a small blue nightstand. Two missed calls and four texts from Flynn. She was surprised, actually. He was normally mellow to a fault, not noticing if she worked till three or four in the morning during a crunch. Apparently he noticed when she stayed out all night.

She sent one text:

I’m all right. With Kate. Will call later.

Then, on second thought, she added:
XO
. Goddamn it, she loved him. She just didn’t know what to
do
with him.

Bringing up a browser window on her phone, she typed, “Greg Jenkins.”

Yep, almost two hundred thousand matches. Without more specifics from Kate, she’d never be able to figure out which one it was. It looked like there were more than a hundred in Northern California alone. What if Kate had been lying? What were the other reasons for giving up a baby? With one finger Pree flicked through dozens of Greg Jenkinses on Facebook as she contemplated the worst reasons.

Incest. Pree shuddered at the thought that perhaps she was made of a commingling of an already mingled gene pool. But according to Kate’s wiki, Kate’s father died in a helicopter crash while she was young, so—thank god—that probably wasn’t it, unless there was a barbaric uncle or cousin in the mix.

Rape. Kate had been sixteen when she’d had Pree. It was possible. It wasn’t like Pree hadn’t had the thought before, after all, imagining herself the product of force and anger. If so, would Kate have given Pree a fake father’s name, just to throw her off the scent? Is that something a woman had to keep her child from ever learning, or was it something that would be on the adoption forms? Did the moms know? They’d kept so much from her for so long, after all . . .

The anger Pree felt was low grade, sitting on a back burner. She could turn up the gas at any moment, and it would boil over, hurting everyone. Didn’t she get points for trying to play it cool? To understand? Pree wished for the equivalent of a gold star, wished that someone would notice her Herculean effort to understand Kate and the moms. Pree knew—better and better each day—why a woman could decide to give away a child. There were a million reasons, and more for a teenager. But knowing this with the front part of her mind, the logical, rational part, didn’t smother that slow molten flow of anger that Kate—this smart, intelligent, interesting woman—hadn’t chosen
her.
Childish. She was being so fucking childish.

Pree stood and draped herself in the long black terry cloth robe Kate had left on the bed the night before.

The image of the underside of Jimmy’s desk flashed in her mind.

Ignoring the dull headache that tugged at her temples, Pree wandered out into the hallway wearing the robe over the T-shirt and shorts Kate had given her to sleep in. She craved cereal. Sweet cereal, with cold milk. It was something she never had—Flynn didn’t like milk and Pree normally tried to stay away from processed grains and sugars. It was a leftover from when she’d lived at home with the moms. They’d always believed in starting the day with protein. “A day without an egg is a day wasted,” Marta had said almost every single morning of her life. She and Isi had even talked about getting chickens once, but then they went to a dyke-fest urban homestead party where everyone got to kill a chicken, pluck it, and bring the meat home. Isi, who had worked with dead chickens in every restaurant she’d ever been in, came home pale, and Marta, normally vegetarian, went vegan for three months. Without dying from lack of eggs, too, Pree had pointed out. They didn’t get the chickens.

Oh, shit, what if this need for cereal and milk was her first baby craving? Did the fetus want carbs? The thought was alarming.

There was no sound in Kate’s house as Pree padded toward the staircase. It was already eight, a time when Pree’s own normal routine was already buzzing—she was usually up and drinking coffee while she read the grisly parts of the paper to Flynn as he lay on top of the covers and stretched lazily. Then she’d zoom around their room looking for whatever part of her clothes she’d mislaid that day. By eight forty-five, Pree had to be on the road, headed south to the Peninsula. It was a reverse commute, which was good, but it still meant she sat in her old car for way more than she would have liked. Every once in a while, when traffic got snarled, she’d sketch while driving. She knew this was technically a bad idea, but she’d do it only when the average speed was less than ten miles an hour, and she never looked down at the pad of paper on her lap, never glanced at the tip of her pencil. She drew quickly in the blind, grabbing—stealing—the faces of people in cars around her: women singing along with their radios, mouths open, eyes wide; men scowling and punching their dashboards as if that would make traffic move, obey.

Pree should be thinking about going to work, not wandering the hall of Kate’s house in clothes that weren’t her own. But that would mean going home for a fresh outfit, facing Flynn, and then facing Jimmy . . .

Pree touched the smooth rail of the unfamiliar staircase. Nolan, Kate’s ex, had lived here, gone down these stairs a million times. What was he like? Why had Kate loved
him
enough to keep a child with him?

The steps ended in an open area of pale wooden floor where a sideboard stood, so cluttered you couldn’t see even an inch of its surface. Mail, books, a pack of red thank-you cards half open—things were spilled everywhere. A pink lamp leaned at one end of the sideboard, and what looked, improbably, like a hat covered in black feathers rested on the top shelf next to five or six votive candle holders. On the floor below, a pile of shoes spread out into the hallway. Pree counted at least fifteen pair. Kate was a clutterer. Like her. Marta said Pree had a problem with stacks—everything she touched she put in a pile somewhere until, inevitably, and sometimes with great sound, the pile tipped over. But it was a system that her brain understood. She knew exactly what pile everything was in. If she’d been forced to use an actual system, she wouldn’t have had a clue where to look for things.

So she got that from Kate.

Pree looked over her shoulder as she entered the kitchen, feeling guilty. Maybe she should wait for Kate to get up? But there was something so satisfying about this, prowling around Kate’s house, seeing the way she kept it, without having to keep her face politely composed. She pulled open drawers at random: cutlery, foil, potholders. She found the junk drawer, full of forks with bent tines and knotted pieces of string. Matches and rubber bands vied for space next to thumbtacks and a level. She pulled out three measuring tapes, only one of which let her measure more than four inches without snapping back. A satisfying jumble. Pree had one drawer in the dresser that she and Flynn shared full of exactly the same things.

She shut the drawer quietly and went back to her mission: cereal. Would Kate have the healthy stuff or the crap?

Hot damn, jackpot! She not only had Honey Nut Cheerios, Pree’s favorite, but she went one step further: Cocoa Puffs. Years and years ago, Pree had bought a box with babysitting money. She’d hidden it in her room and had eaten it one puff at a time, sitting on the edge of her open windowsill so the smell of chocolate would waft out, not in, so Marta, who would have died a thousand fiery deaths before she’d let something like that cross her doorstep, didn’t find her out.

Pree filled a blue bowl with it immediately.

She guessed that if Kate
did
find her at that moment, she probably wouldn’t mind. She might even be pleased Pree felt comfortable in her house. But as soon as Pree poured the milk into the bowl, she felt nervous and jangled, and instead of staying in the kitchen, she stepped out the kitchen door and sat outside to eat on the small side porch.

Heavy fog dripped from the trees and telephone lines, and she was glad for the thick robe. The wetness of the air weighted down a massive cobweb draped under a low bush. The cereal was sweeter than anything Pree had ever eaten before ten in the morning, and it went straight to her head. The darker thoughts she’d had upstairs dissipated, and a bright happiness as sweet as the cereal filled her brain. It wasn’t until she was almost done eating that she realized she could not only see the corner of Kate’s driveway, but that she could see a guy—a neighbor, probably, waiting to pick up a child—waiting in his car across the street. She felt suddenly skeevy, sitting there in Kate’s clothing, eating purloined cereal.

She grabbed her bowl, and carried it in, thankful she hadn’t accidentally locked herself out, something she hadn’t even thought of until she felt how easily the lock flicked closed when she got inside.

Then she scurried back upstairs to wait to hear something. When she heard Kate get up, she would pretend she’d slept in. As she pulled the blanket again over her and looked out at the fog wreathing the willow, she felt a sudden joy floating inside her, as if she’d swallowed a sweet balloon. She felt safe. It was misplaced, of course—you had to admit that feeling safe just because you were near your bio mom was pretty dumb, especially when she was the one who’d abandoned you so long ago, that she was, actually, the prime mover of your whole unconventional life (lesbian moms! artistic tendencies! attachment failures!).

But the feeling was good, and she drew it closely around herself, determined to lie in the warmth of it as long as she could.