You Have Seven Messages (15 page)

Wait a second. That’s it? She just stopped there? What did she mean?
Daughter? Friend?

The weird thing is, it feels like a goodbye. Was she going to run off with Cole to Europe? She would never do that to Tile, or me. Or would she? Did that angelic woman in the video have a dark side she never showed to the world? Do we all?

I hear my mother’s landline ring. Who would be calling her a year after she died?

The caller ID says
Private Number
. I decide to just answer it. How can I not?

“Hello?”

They hang up, and for a second it all seems like some sort of game, like that movie with Michael Douglas. I wonder if more people are going to call my mother’s phone, not realizing she died. I hold the receiver close to my chest. I’m not ready to let it go just yet.

I notice the clock on the stove, still accurate, and think:
Time never stops
. Girls aren’t supposed to think about death, but it feels like a heavy backpack I have to carry with me everywhere I go. Especially standing right here, in my mother’s former space. This cutting board, this blender, all these things that were last touched by her. I shiver and realize I’m late for a meeting Daria set up with the gallery owner.

On the street I pass a Hispanic man who smiles at me so wide I can’t help but smile back. I go down the subway stairs and the train is there. Just as I’m putting on my iPod I look to my left and see the back of a kid’s head with curly hair, and for a second I think it’s Oliver. But I notice he doesn’t have a book bag. The train starts to move and I crane my neck to see him walking toward a girl on the platform, whose face I also can’t see. My view is replaced
by the whizzing blackness of the subway tunnel, and I half smile, wondering if I dreamed it up. In all the years living across from him, I’ve never seen Oliver with a girl. He’s not an obvious catch; it takes strong eyes to see his real beauty. I bet he’ll be one of those boys who gets no attention in high school but has girls falling all over him in college. I look at the woman next to me, tall and mocha-skinned with a modern-style Afro. I notice she’s reading my mother’s book, and my heart feels like a wet towel. I try to concentrate on the Jason Mraz song playing in my ears, but my eyes are drawn like magnets to the back cover of the book. My mother’s author photo, the one that
looks
serious, but she’s really just being herself. I close my eyes for a moment and when I open them, the woman is gone.

Tribeca is very industrial and stark, but the streets are clean and there’s a sense of calm that’s rare in Manhattan. I find the building, and the lobby is filled with animal-print couches and a large sculpture that is shaped sort of like an ice cream cone. I am buzzed up and I panic a little inside the mirrored elevator. I don’t even know this person, and I’m going into his apartment. Will Daria be there? I check my hair, which thankfully has been cooperating.

The elevator opens and the vast and virtually empty space is protected by only glass, with one section in the corner sporting a large orange rug and some comfortable-looking curvy chairs. I walk in timidly and hear a voice say, “Make yourself at home. Daria is having a moment, so it’ll just be us.”

His voice is calm and soft, so immediately my panic subsides. I sit down and thumb through the glossy magazines. Even though I know my pictures are good, I feel like an imposter. Too young, or too “green,” as my dad says about actors.

A couple of minutes later, in walks a slight man with wild hair and kind eyes.

“Well, hello there, I’m Les.”

“Luna, nice to meet you.”

His hands are a little clammy, and his body language reminds me of Tile. Is he blushing?

I draw in a deep breath, then take the duplicate pictures out and spread them on the table. He spends a long minute with each, his expression completely neutral.

“You’ve been shooting long?” he asks after putting down the shot of Ms. Gray.

“Well, not professionally, if that’s what you mean.”

He pours us each a glass of water from a pitcher on the table, and I briefly wonder if it’s drugged. Like Tile, I’ve read too many of my father’s scripts.

“There is a rawness to your vision, which I’m not sure you’re aware of.”

“Well, I took the pictures,” I say, a little too fast. I tell myself to calm down.

He smiles condescendingly, then his face snaps back to its neutral expression. With his green glasses and his salt-and-pepper hair running off his head in every direction, he looks like a caricature.

“Can you leave these prints with me?”

“Sure, I printed two copies, and I also have them scanned.”

Then he just sits there like a satisfied dog.

“So, will you give me a show?”

He rubs his chin as if he’s considering it.

“Not sure what the balance of this year will bring to my gallery. I may have a slot for you but tough to tell. These are strong, but I need to get some more eyes on them.”

I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do now. I should’ve gotten some more advice from Daria.

Suddenly I’m parched. I drink the water down in one gulp and then stand up.

“Okay, well, I should get going.”

He walks me to the elevator and smiles when it opens, then shakes my hand.

On the subway ride home I’m not even sure what to think about the meeting, so I zone back into my iPod, which is playing Imogen’s “First Train Home.” Even though I’m lost in the silky electronic production of the song, my mind keeps flashing on the boy I saw. Part of me wishes that I
were
dreaming it, that maybe the girl greeting him was an optical illusion or some other love story unfurling.

Back in my room everything is quiet. I start learning my vocabulary for English.
Diffident. Inchoate. Verdant
. Oliver’s window is covered up but the light is on.

Maybe it’s just the housekeeper.

“Moon!” Tile yells from the hallway. “There’s nothing to eat.”

“Hang on, I’ll come down.…”

My mother didn’t cook much but she always had things very organized. She liked to spread everything out and just pick at things. Between school and this photography stuff and with Dad gone, I feel like I now have to be a mom, too. I look up at the glossy magazine cutout of my mother on the wall. I’m not sure what possesses me, but I take it down and put it in a drawer.

“Tile!”

He comes to my door and his face is red and blotchy.

“Order something with the card Dad gave you. Just make sure it includes vegetables.”

“Are french fries a vegetable?”

I’m not in the mood for this.

“And wash your face, please.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I go back on the photo blog and see that my entry has gotten over six hundred hits! I notice that Levi’s online, so I IM him the link.

I can hear Tile ordering in the hallway, racking up the bill, I’m sure.

When I walked into his loft I thought it was somewhere special, or at least cost a truckload of money. But why was it mostly empty?

I email JJ and he responds within five minutes from his iPhone.

Wow
. Will it be that easy? At least it’s an actual office and not a colossal empty apartment. I confirm and go back to my vocabulary, until Tile barges in with burgers and fries in big Styrofoam containers, a ketchup packet in his teeth. I redirect him downstairs and we eat at the table. My mother preferred to graze in the kitchen, usually wearing a simple dress and a thin silver choker ending in a leaf that rested gracefully in the crook of her collarbone. My dad was always saying, “We should eat at the table like a normal family,” and she’d reply with something like, “Who wants to be normal?” If only I had read between the lines.

The fries taste salty and good. Proud of himself, Tile makes a show of presenting me with a side of broccoli.

“Your vegetables, madame.”

After dinner he helps me with my vocab flash cards, and all of a sudden it’s ten o’clock.

“Thanks for your help, I’ve got a final tomorrow.”

“Get some rest, big sis,” he says, and blows me a kiss.

As I drift off to sleep, I hear the low, sweeping groan of a cello, but I’m not sure if I’m already dreaming.

I check the lost and found at school for Mom’s phone: no luck. Why I had to lose it with one message left is beyond me. On my way to my English final I pray it will show up somewhere. I finish the test early and notice that the Rachels are cheating. Ms. Gray is oblivious, eating her little Tupperware container of sliced apples.

I meet Janine at lunch and fill her in on stuff.

“That is so cool! Do you think you could just blow off college and become a photographer?”

“I don’t know, we’ll see. My mother told me that a college degree isn’t really necessary anymore, but the experience matters. Friends you make and stuff.”

“I wish my mother were that cool. She basically judges everyone on what school they got into. It’s such an East Coast thing. That’s why I want to go to Berkeley. Will you visit me if I get in?”

I look at her slightly flushed face, with two strings of brown hair framing her cheekbones. She has always been one step ahead of me and so adult about everything, but right now she looks like a lost child.

“Of course,” I say, feeling myself gaining speed on her, this school, everything.

JJ’s office is in the East Village, and to get there I have to walk through what seems like a city of homeless people. I realize it’s because there’s some kind of soup kitchen on the block. I look into as many faces as I can, trying to peer inside their souls. They are so exposed, seemingly stripped of all pride. I wish I could take their pictures, try to capture that feeling in their eyes and their bodies, the tipping point when it all became about survival. I went into survival mode when Mom died. It was only the taste of food and the sound of music that got me through. I listened to Joshua Radin on repeat for like a month.

Before I enter the building I say another prayer, this one for Oliver.

Come back
.

In the reception area I am told to sit down and wait by a skinny woman with severe bangs. I flip through
Variety
and see a little blurb on my dad’s documentary. There’s still a sour spot in my heart, and part of me wants to rip out the page and burn it. If he lied to me about who she was with that night, who’s to say he’s not lying to me
about other things? As Ms. Gray says, lying is a slippery slope. Where do parents draw the line between protecting their children and letting them in on the whole truth? Before I can start to make any sense of my swirling, complicated thoughts, Miss Bangs calls me in.

JJ’s office is covered with photographs and magazines, stacked everywhere like small cities. He’s olive-skinned, with large eyes and thin lips. His long arms and elegant neck remind me of a proud bird. He smiles and shakes my hand.

“So, let’s have a look.”

I show him the shots, which I am starting to get more confident about now. He looks at them, raising a perfectly trimmed eyebrow.

“Now, you have interest from Les, I hear.”

“Yes.”

“Worked with him for years. An odd one, but knows his stuff.” He beeps Miss Bangs on the phone and asks her for a “standard three-sheeter.”

“Tell me a little about where you see yourself, say, in five years.”

Something about his clear gaze relaxes me.

“Well, to be honest, the last year for me has been hard. My mother …”

“I know.”

“Yes, well, for me I’ve just been trying to get through to the next year, you know? Then my father, he bought me this amazing camera, and it just felt natural, like this
was the right thing. In some ways I felt so scattered and lost, like I was floating, and taking pictures is a way for me to arrange things, control something, I guess. I see composition everywhere I go.”

He seems impressed.

“Well, you certainly have a rare gift. A lot of people who start out with these sort of, shall we say
edgy
prints, end up shooting editorial ’cause that’s where the money is. I’d hate for you to go in that direction, as in some cases it numbs you down. What I would do for you is look for more niche gallery placements, and try to orchestrate a book deal.”

“Cool.”

Miss Bangs comes in with the three-sheeter.

“I tell you what, Luna. This is a standard agreement for six months, pretty straightforward. Why don’t you have someone take a look at this and we’ll go from there. In the meantime, I encourage you to treat the camera like a limb—always have one at your side. Almost like a writer with a notebook. When you see that composition, wherever it is, capture it.”