You Have Seven Messages (6 page)

My father comes to my door, ready to go bowling. I feel like our birthday ritual, which I have always loved, has to be put to bed.

“Can we see a movie instead?”

He looks defeated, but slides his glasses up his nose and says, “Sure, what’s your fancy? Comedy? Thriller?”

“Romance, actually.”

We have our driver drop us off downtown. As we wait in line at the cinema, I keep thinking about Oliver’s pillow hair and soft eyes. My dad senses it.

“So, you think you and Oliver will go steady?”

I’ve never really talked to my dad about boys. Ever since the fifth grade when Bradford Noble tried to kiss me on the playground and I kicked him in the crotch, he never really pursued it. Maybe he thinks I’m a lesbian.

“No, but I like his sister,” I say.

“He doesn’t have a sister.”

“Bummer.”

We sit on the side aisle. Even my dad, who has a strong aversion to Hugh Grant, seems to be enjoying himself. I remember being younger and thinking the things that happened in movies were possible. I guess sometimes they are, but this movie is a modern fairy tale where dreams effortlessly come true. Because of my recent crush on Oliver, I am completely drawn in to the point of dorkiness. I even cry.

After, we wait in line to go into John’s pizza, where everyone sits inches apart from one another and it’s so loud we have to yell. It has an opposite effect and calms me, being submerged in a cacophony of sounds. It takes me just as far from my life as Hugh Grant did.

In the movie, the bad guy lost the girl. Watching my father eat his pizza folded like a cone, I wonder why it had to happen to him. He’s the stable one, always telling the truth and giving all of himself, just a really strong, good man. I look at all the people eating together, many of them happy couples. Always something there to remind me.

When we get home, Dad stops us short and says, “Hey! Since you darted off earlier I never got to give you your present!”

He reaches into the bottom cabinet and pulls out a large box that was obviously professionally wrapped—it’s too elaborate. Tile comes barreling in and sits on a stool. Presents bring a crowd.

“Wait!” Tile says. “Me first.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a small manila envelope. “Like Uncle Richard says, the best presents come in envelopes.”

I open it up and pull out a small white index card. In green marker it says,
This certificate entitles you to one foot rub and two homemade cookies, courtesy of Tile Clover
. I smile and lean over, kiss him on his forehead.

My dad looks impatient, so I open the box and cannot believe what I see. It’s a vintage camera, the kind I’ve always wanted, where you stick your head under the black fabric to take a shot. It has the original manual, and the wood is the color of a plum. The film is the size of a slice of bread. It’s exquisite.

I hug him and he looks at me, blushing.

“You’ve always had an eye. Ever since you were this high.” He puts his hand to his knee. He’s right. Since third grade I’ve loved taking pictures. And with the exception of the collage I did with the Rachels, not of people. Mostly of buildings and textures, and strange things in nature. Natural composition that somehow looks unnatural. I never really showed them to people, but my dad’s entire office is covered with my life’s work, wall to wall. Some are pretty cool, but most are really amateurish. People say the onslaught of digital photography diminished
the romance of the art, but even though it’s dated, I will always love the idea of actual film. I used to use my dad’s old Kodachrome and he even built me a darkroom, but I barely use it anymore. I got sucked into the whole Photoshop thing. But now that I have this camera, I’m sure I’ll be using the film again. And I’m so grateful I want to crush him with love.

“I’m gonna go set it up!”

In my room I unfold the tripod and screw on the camera, then focus it across the street. Oliver’s light is on. I wait for a whole twenty minutes until he comes to the window, and take my first shot.

In the morning Tile gives me my foot massage. Even though it’s way too early for dessert, I eat the cookies. He acts like he’s a professional masseur. After he’s done with the left foot, he sighs. “Are you gonna marry Oliver from across the street?”

“Better. We’re going to elope. To Fiji.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s an island.”

“Are there coconuts?”

“A ton.”

“Well, be careful because a thousand and nine people a year die from coconuts falling on their heads.” He starts doing this thing that I love, where he rolls his knuckles down my soles. I tip my head back and finish the cookie.

Before he leaves he turns around at my door and stands in this crooked way that means he’s going to get serious.

“Something about Mom’s death was fishy.”

I sit upright.

“What?”

“Don’t make me repeat it,” he says, and shuts the door.

Some kids are brought up on Nickelodeon and Dr. Seuss, but Tile started reading my dad’s scripts at age six and memorizing all the juiciest lines. In this case, he read my mind, ’cause ever since finding that cuff link it’s like this little seed I don’t know if I want to plant.

I go and find him in his room, throwing his dirty clothes into his hamper.

“Why do you think that?” I ask.

“Do the math,” he says.

Okay, he’s definitely been reading Dad’s scripts
.

“Right,” I say, smiling as I turn away. That’s Tile trying to be dramatic, pretending he knows something.

Back in my room, I tell myself it’s now or never. Eventually I’m going to have to give Mom’s phone back, so I might as well continue. But slowly.

I lock my door, breathe in, and grab Mom’s phone.

I have been deleting them as I go, so as not to leave a trace, and there are four more.

“To listen to your messages, press one.”

“Hi, this is Angela, calling from Butter restaurant. I believe someone in your party left a personal item; please come by any time after four p.m. Tuesday through Sunday to retrieve it. Thank you.”

I immediately go online and look up the restaurant. It’s
only three blocks from where my mother was hit. My heart rate speeds up. Did she go there the night she died?

I go into my father’s office and he puts down the script he’s reading when he sees the look on my face, which I try to erase.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, Moon, shoot.”

“I know you weren’t with Mom the night she died, and every time I asked you, you avoided the question. But I really have to know. What was she doing?”

He adjusts his glasses and looks out the window before turning to me.

“She had gone to dinner with Maria, her yoga teacher. Moon, we’ve been through this.…”

“You just kept saying the details didn’t matter, that she was gone. I only knew the intersection from the police report. I asked a lot and you never told me who she was with.”

“Well, I did now.”

My mother took yoga religiously, but only this particular class that was a combination of techniques. I went with her once and was embarrassed to run into Ms. Gray there. Something about seeing your teacher in real life is unnerving.

“So tell me, how does it feel to be fifteen?”

“Weird,” I say, and go back to my room.

I grab my hoodie, my keys, and my MetroCard and leave without telling anyone. On the subway down to
Astor Place, I notice a Hispanic girl about my age looking at me intently, as if I have something she wants. My pink hoodie? I give her a wave and she smiles, embarrassed. Then I notice a woman at the end of the car, her back to me, reading while slightly curled around the silver pole. Her hair is the exact length and color of my mother’s. As we rumble through the tunnel I walk closer, losing my balance a few times. I feel a strange magnetism, and as I am pulled closer I can even smell her. The train pulls into the station and I reach out to touch her, slowly, and wonder if I’m going crazy. Suddenly she twists her long neck and it’s someone with the shape of my mother’s face but completely different features. She looks at me like she understands, then gazes at her own feet, walking away. Until the next stop I hold on to the pole exactly where she did and close my eyes. When I get out of the subway, the fresh air feels good.

Butter is closed but I can see someone mopping the floor, and I keep tapping on the window until he finally opens the big glass door just a crack.

“What is it?”

“I left something here, it’s really important,” I say.

He shuts the door and holds up his hand.

It starts to rain. Two guys whistle at me as they go by and I give them the finger. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before.
What’s happening to me?

A man with white hair in a crisp suit comes to the door and smiles, lets me in.

“Hi there, what is it you left behind?”

Shit. What am I supposed to say that won’t make me seem like a lunatic?

“I’m not sure.”

That pretty much did it
.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, here’s the deal. My mother told me to get what she left here but she didn’t tell me what it was. If I could just …”

He walks over to the hostess stand and pulls out a black box with no top. I peek over the lid and see a watch, a pair of sunglasses, two sets of keys, and one more thing, glistening in the corner. I know immediately it’s what I am looking for. One cuff link, made to look like a theater mask. The happy face.

I race to the subway to get uptown, then literally sprint across the park. When I get back to my room I frantically search for the other cuff link that I found in Mom’s studio, to make sure they’re a pair.
Maria wouldn’t wear cuff links
. Was someone else at dinner with them? Or … did my father just lie to me?

I’m staring in disbelief when my father peeks his head around the door. I close my fists around the cuff links and put my hands behind my back. For a second, I feel like a magician.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

No, no, it’s not okay. Was Mom having an affair?

“Yes, fine. I’m going to take my new camera out to the street.”

“Good idea,” he says. “Need help?”

I can’t remember the last time my father showed
interest in what I was doing. After the accident he was the king of wallowing, living in a haze of his own grief. How has he made such a turnaround? Just from hanging out with the E-word? It’s like he’s another person altogether. “I can handle it, thanks.”

After he leaves, I decide I need to distract myself from the phone and the messages and whatever they might be revealing. I hide the cuff links in an old pair of shoes and call Daria. It takes me a whole horrifying minute to explain who I am.

“Yes! How’s the bra working out?”

“Great. Thank you again. But I have a non-bra-related question for you. I know you’re like, a big model and everything, but would you sit for me? I got this new vintage camera and I’ve been taking pictures my whole life but never of people, so I want to try. It may just be parts of you, not like, posing or anything.”

“Sure. I’m at the MoMA finishing up a coffee. Be there in twenty.”

“Now? Excellent.” I tell her which park entrance to meet at.

As I set my camera up on the cobblestone walkway bordering the park, people stop and look at it. I still can’t believe it’s mine—it’s so cool! I look around for any sketchy-looking people who might try to run off with it.

When Daria arrives, she sits down on a nearby bench and lights a cigarette. I leave the camera where it is and join her.

“Is that your real name, Daria?”

“No, it’s Diane. I had an agent once tell me that Diane doesn’t screw the camera, Daria does. Total creep. I do like Daria, though.”

“Me too, but today you’re going to be Diane.”

She smiles. “I grew up total white trash, at least after we came to America. My mom used to make casseroles, the ones with crushed potato chips on top? We’d eat it for a week. Now I live in a five-thousand-square-foot Brooklyn loft and hardly ever fly commercial.”

“Wow.”

“My brother runs a landscaping company in Hackensack, where my parents live. He makes forty grand a year, and I make four hundred. When I try to get him something nice, all he ever wants is a case of beer—domestic, no less!”

“Are you Swedish?”

“Latvian.”

I feel naive for thinking I had pegged her. She seems to have a lot of layers. I’m glad I’m going to photograph her. She puts her cigarette out in her coffee cup.

“People think being a model is so glamorous, but it’s not. Have you read your mother’s book?”

“Only parts. I’m not supposed to till I’m eighteen.”

“It’s humiliating, really. You go in for like, some huge spread in
VF
, and you line up and they walk by and sniff you like animals, rape you with their eyes, tapping the ones they don’t want on the shoulder, until there’s like three of you left and you’re sweating, and—”

“Do they ever make you sleep with them?”

“That’s prostitution, honey, it’s illegal. But sometimes, girls do it to rise in the ranks. Then there are ones who don’t really take any crap. I think your mother was like that. I’m learning. I used to do sportswear and catalogues and now I’m doing Gucci and Calvin.”

“How did you first get into it?”

She looks off into the distance as if caught in a memory. Then a flash of shame washes over her face.

“I had a crush on this boy in seventh grade. He was like, half my height at the time.” She giggles and turns toward me, folding one of her lanky legs under the other. “He had one of those horrible ferret things. He called it Madge. I’m not sure why I loved him so much. I think it was because I saw him as this shapeless form that I could mold into something that would be only mine. He was so … malleable. Anyway, I was at his house one day and we were watching some supercheesy movie, and his father came in and started staring at me. It was kind of creepy.”