Girls in the Moon Read online

  It feels different this time, with Archer, because the stakes are lower. If my father isn’t there, or even if he is, I don’t have to worry about what Luna will think. I don’t even have to tell her.

  There’s something so steady about Archer, starting with the way he walks next to me, keeping pace with me exactly even though we aren’t saying anything to each other. It’s only now I realize that when I walk with Luna on these city streets, I feel as if I’m always a half step behind, even when I’m moving as quickly as I can.

  Here on the sidewalk, I want to take Archer’s hand, but something stops me. After talking with Luna last night my head is still a jumble of Tessa and Ben. I wonder, if I take Archer’s hand, is Tessa right about me? Do I even know what I’m doing?

  My phone buzzes then, at the corner of my father’s street, and I pull it out of my bag. It’s a text message from Luna: Be back soon, okay? We can go to the grocery store. I’ll make pasta for dinner. I stand still and text back, Okay. Archer stands exactly next to me on the sidewalk and waits while I scan the street for my father’s building. I point when I see it.

  “That’s it,” I say. It matches up with the picture in my memory: an old factory building with huge windows and wrought iron railings out front lining the four separate doors, four stoops. I recognize the one where I stood with Luna last November.

  “Should we do this?” Archer asks. He must sense my hesitation because he puts his hand out and waits for me to take it. I do, and he squeezes my fingers gently. We walk together toward the door.

  Panic spreads through my body like ice. I haven’t seen my father in almost three years and now I’m just going to show up, without Luna and with Archer, and I don’t even really know what’s going on with us. I’ve been more honest with Archer about this than anyone except Tessa, even if I haven’t told him everything. For one thing, my father is playing a show at the Bowery Ballroom tomorrow night and I’m planning to get myself invited.

  But Archer is still holding my hand, and before I know it we’re up on the stoop, my finger pressing the bell. The same green tape label is stuck over the buzzer, and I look at all the letters in my father’s name until the door opens.

  twenty-nine

  MEG

  JUNE 1994

  IT WAS ONLY WHEN KIERAN turned on the lamp that I realized I was pretty much sitting in the dark. My guitar was on the floor in front of me, but I hadn’t touched it in at least an hour. I had even picked up a brand-new composition notebook at the drugstore down the street, but it wasn’t helping.

  “We’re screwed,” I said. Kieran sat down on the arm of the couch.

  “I don’t know what to write.” I shut my notebook. “They’ve rejected three songs so far.”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s okay, babe.”

  “Too wordy, they say. Needs a hook.” I tossed Rick’s notes on the floor. “You know, Rick has terrible handwriting.”

  Kieran laughed. “We probably shouldn’t tell him that.”

  I raised my chin and glanced up at him. “I might.”

  “Breathe,” Kieran said. He kneeled down behind me and slipped his hands over my shoulders. When he pressed down with his fingertips, I realized how tight my muscles were. I sighed and dropped my chin to my chest.

  “This isn’t how I thought it was going to be,” I said. I ran my toe over a scratch on the hardwood, one Kieran made months ago sliding his amp over the floor. Our cat, Patti Smith, walked over and bopped my knee with her head. I reached out to touch her fur.

  “So here’s what I think,” Kieran said. “You’re trying to do this on your own, but we’re a team, right? Let me see what you’re writing.”

  I handed him the notebook.

  “‘You’re at the edge of the sky and falling,’” he read. He looks up. “That’s good.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t even know what it means,” I said.

  Kieran picked up my pen and started writing, just a few words. He handed me the notebook, and I read what he’d written.

  But the world’s not flat anymore.

  He was watching for my reaction. I smiled.

  “You have terrible handwriting too,” I said. But I liked what he had scrawled there. It wasn’t bad.

  Kieran shrugged. “There’s a reason Lennon and McCartney did their best work together. Don’t go rogue, Paul.” He poked me in the shoulder.

  “Come on,” I said. “I’d be Lennon. You’re the McCartney, Mr. Sentimental.”

  “Fine.” Kieran stood up and pulled me close. “I can handle that. You can make sure I keep my edge.”

  “You’d have to have an edge to keep it,” I said. He shook his head, smiling.

  “Shut up,” he said, and kissed me.

  thirty

  WHEN HE OPENS THE DOOR, my father looks pretty much the same as he ever did. He’s wearing a dark blue T-shirt and jeans with a pair of black headphones around his neck, the cord looped around his hand like a lasso. His hair is a little shorter than it used to be, but he still doesn’t really look like anyone’s dad. Which is fine, because he isn’t. Not really.

  For a moment, he squints at me as if he’s trying to place me, or maybe to make sure it’s actually me. Maybe he’s looking for identifying marks, just as I’m searching for the dimple I know is there in his right cheek, mirror-matching my own. I feel like a specimen dropped off on his doorstep, ready to be examined. Then his face breaks into a smile.

  “Phoebe,” he says. “I didn’t know you were in town.”

  Right, I think. How would you have known?

  “I am,” I say. “Um, obviously. I hope it’s okay I stopped by.” I fidget, rubbing the fingertips of my right hand together. I dropped Archer’s hand sometime before the door opened, and I feel unmoored and unsteady. My father is nodding, smiling like it’s any old day.

  “Of course it is,” he says, and his voice is warm and friendly. This whole long-lost-daughter thing doesn’t seem like a big deal to him. You’d think we had seen each other a couple of weeks ago.

  “You answer your own door,” I say. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to have to explain who I was.”

  “Nope.” He shakes his head. “I have a couple of other engineers who work with me sometimes, but it’s only me here now. I’m recording Prue Donohue today.” He motions with his head behind him and says this as if I know who she is, but of course I don’t.

  I reach to my side and touch the wrought iron railing, which is warm and smooth. “We don’t want to interrupt.”

  “We’re just finishing up,” he says. “Come in.” I step into the foyer just as he looks past me to Archer. I realize I haven’t introduced him yet.

  “This is my friend Archer.” I angle my body back toward him.

  “Hi, Archer.” My father puts his hand out, and Archer shakes it.

  “He’s in Luna’s band,” I say.

  “Oh, right. You play bass? I saw you guys at the Mudroom.” My father backs up into the foyer and then begins to lead us down a narrow hallway into the studio. The walls are lined with framed records: my father’s four solo albums placed in chronological order the way we’re walking, along with other records I don’t recognize on the opposite wall.

  “I remember,” says Archer, behind me. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Sure.” My father glances back at us. “I was hoping to talk to Luna afterward, but she disappeared.”

  I don’t look back at Archer, but I hear him hesitate before deciding, as I expect, to cover for Luna. “She wasn’t feeling well,” he says.

  My father nods, but I can see only the back of his head, so I can’t tell if he believes Archer’s story or not.

  The studio is sunny thanks to a huge window on the right side, looking out onto a courtyard behind the building. It’s not very big in here, though what space it occupies is crammed with instruments and amps and cables.

  There’s a pretty girl in her late twenties sitting at the soundboard, pink streaks in her dark blond hair.

  �
��Hey,” she says, her voice low and sweet.

  “Hey,” I say. I feel like I’m echoing her. “I’m sorry to interrupt.” I glance at my father, who sits down next to her.

  “No,” he says. “We were just listening back.”

  “I’m Prue,” she says.

  “Phoebe.” My father gestures for Archer and me to sit on a low leather sofa against the wall. Archer sits, but I don’t. I lean my hip against the couch.

  “My daughter,” my father explains to Prue. He says it easily, as if the word doesn’t feel strange in his mouth.

  “Nice,” she says, nodding. “I played a show with your sister. She’s great.” For the first time since I walked through the door I wish Luna were here, if only so she can tell me what I’m supposed to think of this girl. Prue leans a little closer to my father than I would to a guy twenty years older than me, but maybe it’s a trust thing, artist to engineer. Maybe he’s a father figure. He’s certainly not busy fathering anyone else.

  “I’m in the Moons,” Archer explains. “Archer Hughes.” He leans forward and puts out his hand. She shakes it, her smile spreading even wider across her face.

  “Great,” she says. “I thought I recognized you.” She looks back toward me. “Luna’s not with you?”

  “No,” I say. Obviously, I think. Unless she’s invisible.

  There are three guitars on stands next to the sofa, one the sleek Fender Jazzmaster I know my father likes best, its edges asymmetrical as an amoeba. The sound booth past this room is the size of Luna’s bedroom on Schermerhorn, and I can see a stool and a microphone in the center. On the far wall are a bunch of posters from my father’s solo shows, each framed carefully in black and matted in three inches of creamy white paper. I can’t keep myself from walking closer to them. One is from his first solo tour, when I was two. He stands with his guitar slung over his shoulder, his eyes cast off to the side, trying to look serious.

  “I’m out, Kieran,” Prue says. I turn back toward her. She slings a huge purse over her shoulder. “I’ve got to pick Alexei up at four.” I wonder if Alexei is her boyfriend. But just as easily he could be her kid or even her dog. A little dog, I decide, but maybe a rescue, at least.

  My father nods at Prue. My father is always nodding. He starts to sing the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Prue says, but she’s smiling. “I’ve already been out to play. Nice to meet you guys.”

  “You too,” I say. She seems perfectly nice, but I still can’t quite make my mouth form a smile. I sit down on the couch then because I don’t know what else to do. I want to reach out and touch Archer’s hand or his knee, but that would probably be weird. He’s looking at me, though, asking some sort of question with his eyes. Are you okay? or Do you want to go? or maybe Should we stay a little longer? I give a little nod to all three of the imagined questions.

  Archer looks around the room. “You have a nice setup here.”

  “Thanks,” my father says. “It’s small, but it works. I get some great musicians because I’m willing to give them attention but be hands-off when they need it.”

  Ha! I think. He has a lot of experience in being hands-off.

  I almost laugh. My interior voice is a bit of a brat today.

  “Can you fit a whole band in there at once?” Archer asks.

  My father shakes his head. “It would be tight. I don’t usually record whole bands live. Mostly solo artists, or bands done one or two instruments at a time. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  They pass through the sound booth’s door and I watch them through the glass of the windows. My father is taller than Archer by several inches, and as they bend with their heads together I have this sudden panicky feeling that I don’t really know either of them at all. I wish for Luna again, or for my mother or Tessa to be here with me on this black leather couch. But then they turn and I feel better. There’s my father, who is finally within yards of me after three years. There’s Archer, who came with me willingly and even held my hand.

  As they’re coming out, my father asks Archer who recorded the Moons’ last record.

  “We recorded with Greg at Jackson,” Archer says, and though it sounds cryptic to me, my father knows the studio he’s talking about. He smiles.

  “Greg’s a great engineer,” he says. He sits down at the soundboard but swings his chair around to face the sofa, and just then I’m closer to him than I’ve been this whole time. I look at his face without trying to hide it. I can see faint wrinkles in the outside corners of his eyes, which deepen when he smiles. He takes the headphones from around his neck and sets them down on the desk. “Are you looking to record again soon?”

  “We have enough material,” Archer says, sitting down next to me. The sofa sinks a little, and I feel calmer knowing he’s so close. “Just trying to raise the funds.”

  My father leans back in his chair and it creaks, a short, crickety sound beneath him. “I’ll do it for free,” he says. “I’d be happy to.”

  I look at Archer. His mouth has dropped open and his eyes are wide. I feel woozy, and certain that I’ve made some kind of mistake by coming here. This is spinning out of my control.

  “Luna likes to do things on her own,” I say. I sit forward, holding the edge of the sofa with both hands.

  “Sure,” my father says. “But I’d like to help if she’ll let me.”

  Archer looks at me and then back to my father. “It’s so generous of you,” he says. “Luna doesn’t tell anyone she’s your daughter.” He smiles sheepishly. “Though people keep figuring it out.”

  My father seems to consider this. He picks up a pen from the desk absentmindedly, without turning his head to look at it, then rolls it between his fingers.

  “I admire that,” he says. “But it’s silly not to use my studio. I can ask another engineer to do the recording, if she wants. Hell, Greg can do it. But why pay for studio time when I have the place right here?”

  “You make a good argument,” Archer says. He looks at me. “We’ll talk to her.”

  I take a breath, but my lungs don’t feel big enough for how deeply I want to breathe. My father looks at me.

  “I’d like to see Luna, Phoebe. Will you tell her that?” My father is looking right at me, and this close I see that his brown eyes are flecked with green. Something in his posture reminds me of Luna, and maybe it’s because they’re both used to being in a room full of people looking back at them. “And I’d like to see you again too,” he says.

  For a second, I look at him and I think, Um, I’m seeing you right now. Are you kicking me out? But I don’t really know how to do this either: how to hang out, how to be together.

  My father puts his hands on his knees. “I have a show at the Bowery Ballroom tomorrow night. I can put you on the list. With Luna, maybe? And Archer, of course.”

  “You’re playing tomorrow?” I say. “I didn’t know that.” I feel as if I were reading from a script. I wonder if Archer can tell that I’m lying. I wonder if my father can. “Sure, we’ll come. I don’t know about Luna, though.”

  “Great.” My father writes down his phone number in dark blue ink, even though it’s the same one he’s had for years and I still know it by heart. He writes his address below it. He hands me the paper and I look at it.

  “Okay,” I hear myself say.

  Later, Archer walks me down into the train station even though he’s planning on meeting Josh at their practice space in Dumbo in an hour. We stand in the swamp-like heat of the train tunnel waiting for the light and the rush of the next train way down the track. I feel a little dizzy, and I can’t tell you what time it is, really, or whether it’s light or dark outside.

  “I should go back to the apartment,” I say. “Luna wants me to go grocery shopping with her. She’s making dinner.” I’m looking forward to it, strangely: Luna’s tiny kitchen and old dishes and tomato sauce from a jar.

  “That should be interesting,” he says.

  “I think she’s just making
pasta,” I say, and as if it’s necessary, “from a box.”

  He’s smiling. Then he presses his lips together. “Are you going to tell Luna we saw him?”

  “No way. Are you crazy?” I say it like I’m joking, but I’m serious. “I’ll figure something out.” I studied the map on my train ride earlier, and I know where I’m going. “I’ll meet you outside the Bowery stop at seven tomorrow.”

  “You’re not going to tell her where we’re going?”

  “No,” I say. “I’m just gonna go.”

  We stand for a moment, facing each other, and I’ve never been so aware of the air. I pull my phone from my purse without looking away from him. A smile starts to play at the edges of his mouth, and he nods.

  “Okay, Phoebe. I don’t know how you’re going to pull this off, but I’ll be there. Text me if you have a problem.”

  When I reach out and take my phone back from him, our fingertips touch. I want to grab his hand, but I don’t. Not yet.

  “I’m sure I’ll have lots of problems,” I say, “but I’ll be there.”

  thirty-one

  IN THE MORNING, LUNA AND I head to a bagel shop on Montague before the sun starts to get hot. We order honey-wheat bagels toasted with cream cheese—they make their own, Luna says—and wait for them, leaning at the end of the counter. The guy at the cash register looks at Luna carefully while he hands back her change.

  “You’re Luna,” he says. He tilts his head, but his carefully messy hair stays still.

  “I am,” she says. She smiles a Mona Lisa smile and straightens her shoulders.

  He takes our package of bagels from the girl who toasted them and hands them to her. “Of Luna and the Moons,” he says. His coworker puts her elbows on the counter and looks at Luna as if she thinks she should know her, but doesn’t.

  Luna shakes her hair over her shoulders. “That’s the one.”