You Have Seven Messages (13 page)

The scary thing is that I know what she’s talking about, sort of. On the subway, when I was resting my head on Oliver’s shoulder and parts of his hair tickled my forehead, the train might just as well have been a plane, something with wings. I felt suspended above everything: the city, time, the hard, cold edges of the world. It was fleeting, but it’s a memory I can still feel.

I remember I have a dentist appointment, so I make my way down to Sixty-Third Street. My former dentist, a funny and kind man, has been replaced by an Indian guy who’s very soft-spoken and eternally sad. The receptionist, a college kid named Levi with obviously dyed black hair and a nose ring, is a photographer. He gave me and Tile a flyer for a show he did once. I never got to go, but I remember the image on the postcard. It was an arm reaching into white space, and in the distance was a reddish sky. Something about it resonated with me, so I taped it to my locker.

“Hey, he’s running a little late,” Levi says.

“Who, Mr. Sunshine?”

He smiles. “Rays and rays of it.”

I tell him about my camera, shooting Daria, and the
possibility of a show. He mentions this cool blog that tons of photographers are on, and how he got picked for representation through it. It was what led to his own show.

“So receptionist is not the end goal?” I ask.

“Safe to say.”

I sink down into the giant couch in the waiting room, and it seems to eat me alive. I can barely see the top of Levi’s head as he answers the phones, which are very persistent. When I’m called in ten minutes later, I have to wrench myself out of the thing.

Mr. Smiley cleans my teeth as I watch Rachael Ray cook something that involves pork and mushrooms on the monitor above the dentist chair. When he’s finished and I get up to leave, I think I see a hint of a grin, but then I realize he’s burping.

I get home to Tile, Elise, and my father eating in the dining room again. At least it’s not the stew. They are having takeout from Thai Palace, and I’m excruciatingly hungry. Instead of scolding me for being out late, Dad simply says, “Moon, we got you the yellow coconut curry.”

“Thanks,” I say, taking a seat.

Elise is looking at me with this overblown smile, like I’m five, and it’s irritating. I have an urge to dunk her head into the steaming soup. As usual, Tile is smothering his chicken satay in peanut sauce.

“So, Moon, what did you do today?”

Somehow I think
Read Mom’s diary
wouldn’t be appropriate, so I concentrate on the other stuff. “I took my camera to school, got some good shots.”

“Tiley says you also shot a model by the park?”

I look at Tile. He’s pretending to concentrate on chewing the chicken and not returning my gaze. I haven’t prepared an answer for how I know Daria. Nothing comes so I just look at Tile hard and say, “Yes.”

That settles it. We eat in silence. The curry tastes good, and I remember how much of it I ate after Mom died. Almost every day for months. My mother didn’t like Thai food; she preferred Japanese. Whenever we ate Thai, she would have her own little tray of sushi from Whole Foods. She was an expert at using the chopsticks. Sometimes she’d put unused ones in her hair. She never ate dessert, unless it was fruit. She was always conscious of her diet but not obsessive, like Rachel One’s mother, who’s so thin she looks sickly. She would discourage Rachel from eating carbs or sugar, even when we were ten! As I bite into a moist chunk of potato, I’m so thankful that my mother never imposed any phobias on me. Rachel One will probably always have issues with food, and it won’t be pretty. So many girls and women suffer from eating disorders, and to me it seems so useless. Why spend so much energy on making yourself look like an airbrushed waif in a magazine? My mother was skinny, but she was strong. She did Pilates and yoga. There are so many challenges that the world brings, why waste all that worry on the shape of your body? There’s nothing sadder than hearing the tenth graders at my school throwing up in the girls’ room.
Try losing your mother
, I often think.
That will give you something to throw up about
.

Elise attempts to clear my plate but I say, “It’s okay, I got it.”

The plan is to go to the movies, but I opt to stay home. Dad asks me if everything’s all right, even though he knows it’s not. Why do adults insist on asking important questions at the wrong time? Why not just wait to ask me when it’s the right time, when we can actually talk?

“I’m fine,” I say, sick of white lies.

As they are leaving, Tile says, “Want me to bring you back Gummi Bears?”

I smile and shake my head.

After they leave, I go into my room and walk over to the window. I know Oliver is practicing, but the blinds are drawn. I see Tile’s Flip camera still stuck into my computer, the files all uploaded. I start to watch the footage.

It’s mostly terrible. Handheld is not even the word. More like earthquake. There’s one great sequence, though, where my mother is steaming some wineglasses and wiping them with a small white towel. She’s wearing a pale green dress, and her hair is unusually wispy. She looks so beautiful, so at ease. The steam makes her face flush a little and she laughs at the camera when Tile asks, “How long have you worked in this household?”

I save that section and try to find other bits I can use. There is a POV shot entering the master bedroom, and I can hear my mother say something out of the shot. In a screenplay this would be called OS, for
offstage
. It’s a
simple sentence, but knowing what I know now, it is rooted in a whole other story.

It’s over, Jules
.

I look at the date of the clip: three weeks before she died. What’s over? A TV show? The marriage? The affair?

The camera sweeps quickly past my father, who looks, as Cole mentioned, “distraught.” Then my mother comes into the frame and turns on the charm, spinning around, modeling her nightgown. How can she just switch gears like that if she was talking about what I think she was talking about?

Tile asks her how old she is.

“Twenty-nine,” she jokes.

“And what’s your favorite color?”

“Red. The color of passion.”

She looks across the room, presumably at my father, and her face deflates a little.

Then the clip gets cut off.

The next few segments are too shaky, but there’s one that is salvageable. She’s getting ready to leave, putting a scarf and a jacket over her dress, and she does it effortlessly. The whole time, she’s looking at the camera with an expression of truth. She is not trying to be glamorous, or funny, or pretty. She’s just being herself. I pause it, and stare into her eyes.

Truth
. If it really is our skin, why is it so hard to live by? All that time I witnessed my parents’ life together, there was nothing I thought more “true.” I remember
noticing the way Rachel One’s parents acted around each other, almost as if they were business partners—everything so rigid and planned, no affection, no longing in their eyes. I knew that wasn’t “true.” But in my house, seeing my mother throw her head back and do her angel laugh, my dad pinch her butt, kiss her lightly on the delicate skin below her ear … all of this was the truth. And now, crushing me with more weight than her being gone is the realization of that truth being an illusion, that their love wasn’t strong enough to hold them together. If they built a love to withstand time, why did it crumble?

I walk to the window once more. The light is on now but the blinds are still drawn. I picture Oliver working on his pieces, his eyes closed in concentration, his soft hand caressing the bow.

I will not give up on you, Oliver. Sometimes the love we build is meant to survive
.

The next day after school I find myself at Rachel One’s house. I was in a daze all day, just going through the motions, and when she asked me to come over, I just said yes without even thinking about it. Now, in her chocolate-brown-and-pink-trimmed room, with pictures of Zac Efron and Penn Badgley everywhere, I feel like I have to get to the bottom of something.

“Why do you want to be friends with me again?”

She brushes her golden locks, which she does so much it’s a wonder they don’t just fall off.

“It’s not that we weren’t friends, it’s just, you sort of went off the deep end for a while.”

“Isn’t that when you need friends the most?”

“Babe, I tried. Remember? You told me I should go back into my Barbie box.”

Did I say that?
I hold back a smile.

“Fair enough. But I’m still skeptical.”

“You’ve always been that way.” She holds up her butter fly hair clips. “Now, what do you think, purple or blue?”

Like I care
. Still, I humor her. “Blue, definitely. Matches your eyes.”

“Okay, now tell me, who is it?”

“What?”

“You’ve been walking around school in a romantic haze. I’m no Einstein, but I know when someone is in love. C’mon, I want dish. Who is it?”

Is it that obvious?
I feel myself blushing yet again. I suppose if there’s anyone who’s going to get it out of me, it’s Rachel One.

“Well, he lives across the street from me. He plays the cello.”

“Sounds McDreamy. Name?”

“Oliver.”

She starts applying lip liner for what I assume to be the tenth time today. “Good name. Old money.”

As if on cue, Rachel One’s mother comes to the door, asking if we want a snack. She is so perfectly put-together she looks almost grotesque. When you try too hard, sometimes it has the opposite effect. It may be that she’s had too much work done on her face.

“Sure,” I say. Rachel looks at me like I’m crazy to even consider putting something in my mouth, let alone swallowing it.

“Which Hampton do they summer in?”

I have to laugh at this question coming from a fifteen-year-old, but I answer it nonetheless.

“His dad lives in Easthampton, but I think his parents are … separated.”

“Hmm.”

Rachel is now inspecting her pores and, at the same time it seems, devising a plan. Although I’m not opposed to beauty tips, that’s about as far as I’ll go in letting Rachel get involved in the Oliver situation.

Her mother comes back with rice cakes and dried apricots and places them on the desk, along with a bottle of Pellegrino, which never fails to remind me of my father. I’m going to have to talk to him once and for all, and get things completely out in the open.

When her mother leaves, Rachel turns away from the mirror and looks at me.

“How far have you gone?”

“We’ve only kissed. But he’s so sweet. He helped me with … stuff. But the other day he totally changed. Like, his face turned cold and he said he had to work on his cello a lot for his upcoming recital.”

“Fear of commitment.”

“Rachel, it’s not like we’re getting married.”

“Babe, it happens all the time. You were getting too close.”

I am astonished to think that she may be right.

“Stay cool,” she says. “Keep your distance. He’ll come around.”

That’s what Daria said
.

“Come on, let’s go down to the theater.”

I grab a rice cake on the way out and we head down to the movie theater, which is actually in her house. I spent many childhood afternoons dwarfed by its black walls and huge leather couches, watching Disney movies, oblivious to what the world had in store for me.

Before we get ten minutes into
Bring It On
, I realize it’s time for me to hear the last message. One of the reasons why I have waited is that each message is getting me closer and closer to her death, and part of me knows that the last message is the last thing she would have heard, perhaps in the same hour she died, and it’s all a little creepy. But something tells me the time is now.

I bring my bag into the floral-wallpapered bathroom with eighty-dollar candles lining the toilet, and look for my mom’s phone. It’s not there.

I’m not sure how long I remain in the bathroom before I hear Rachel One knocking. I flush the toilet, then open the door.

“You okay?” she asks. “You look a little pale.”

I tell her I don’t feel good and have to go. I run through all the places I’ve been, trying to think where I could’ve left it. The studio is where I last listened, but I remember having it after that at home.

Back in my room I go through everything, but no luck.
Do not tell me I have lost the phone before hearing the last message!
Especially if it contains the crucial detail, like something in a photograph that completes the picture.

To keep myself busy, I scan some of my images into my computer and check out the blog Levi mentioned. I notice there’s a link to a contest for best city photograph. I decide I’ll use the one with the kid drawing the city in chalk. It costs twenty dollars to submit a picture, so I’ll use the credit card my dad gave me for emergencies. I know this isn’t one, but I think I deserve it, considering. I look at some of the photographers’ work and feel really, really humbled. How could I even dream of being in the same league as these people? But then I read a blog about how art is subjective and even untrained people can have a gift and just not know it. This gives me hope.

I take a break from the computer and try to concentrate on my math final. For some reason, I’ve always studied on my bed. It helps me to have the space to spread things around. I usually get back cramps but do it anyway. I start reviewing my geometry, which Janine hates but I’m pretty good at, even though it seems like stretching your brain for some workout it will never do in real life. When am I going to have to use the Pythagorean theorem?

Halfway through reviewing my first lesson plan, I hear my computer chime. It’s an IM from Daria. She tells me she got me an interview with a Brooklyn zine in a few days. Seeing as I’m not really a photographer yet, this strikes me as odd. I write down the information anyway, and we sign off.