Girls in the Moon Read online

  Now I craned my neck to see him over by the drinks. “Are you sure?” I asked. “He’s not carrying a lacrosse stick.”

  “I’m sure!” Tessa said, stage-whispering.

  The blond guy brought his beer over near where we were sitting, just beyond the ring of chairs. One of his friends followed, a dark-haired guy with almond-shaped eyes and nice shoulders in his pullover sweater.

  “Hey,” the blond one said to Tessa, seeing her looking his way. He came around the chairs to sit in front of us. “I’m Tyler.” His hair was long and nearly fell into one of his eyes, so he kept his head perpetually at a slight angle. But he was cute.

  “Tessa,” she said. “And this is Phoebe.” I lifted my hand in a wave. His dark-haired friend smiled.

  “I’m Ben,” he said. He was looking at me when he said it, but then he held his hand out to Tessa, who was closer. She shook it.

  “You guys play lacrosse?” Tessa asked. Very subtle, Nancy Drew, I thought, but they didn’t seem to think it was strange.

  Ben nodded and Tessa widened her eyes at me. I smiled.

  “We do,” Tyler said. He pointed to Ben with the neck of his bottle of beer. “This kid’s an ace.”

  Ben smiled. “My mom grew up on the reservation. I played a lot with my cousins growing up.”

  “Seriously, he’s a star.” Tyler made a motion with his hands that I figured was supposed to mimic a lacrosse throw (toss?), but really he looked like he was shoveling snow in a very weird way. “I practice all the time and he still kicks my ass.”

  “My eight-year-old cousin could kick your ass,” Ben said, “so that doesn’t mean much.”

  A peacock screamed then from somewhere inside the zoo, a shrill and sharp sound louder than anything in the yard. Fitting, I thought. Tyler and Ben were basically peacocks, sparring with each other in hopes of impressing a drab brown female. Shaking their bird booties and fanning out those iridescent tail feathers, and for what?

  Someone across the yard turned the radio up a little louder, and I could hear the plaintive voice of a pop starlet over electronic-sounding riffs.

  “Taylor Swift,” Tyler said, wrinkling his nose.

  “What?” said Tessa. “You’re so sophisticated that Ms. Swift can’t possibly satisfy you?”

  “I wouldn’t say that exactly. I’ve just been listening to a lot of nineties rock lately. It’s a different sound: dirtier, fuzzier. Nirvana, you know? Early Weezer. Sometimes Shelter.”

  Tessa laughed, a soft, honking sort of laugh that managed to sound sweet and mean at the same time.

  “What?” Tyler said. He leaned forward.

  “Are you for real?” Tessa asked. She looked at me, then back at him. “If you want to impress us, you’re going to have to try harder.”

  I tried to send Tessa a message with my eyes, like Maybe you should wait a little bit before you start playing hard to get.

  Tyler looked so genuinely confused that I was sure he didn’t know who I was. I decided to let him off the hook.

  “My dad is Kieran Ferris,” I said.

  “What?” He looked floored. “And so your mom is—”

  “Meg Ferris.”

  “Oh my god,” he said, his eyes wide. “I knew she lived in Buffalo, but I thought she was a hermit or something.” He was shaking his head. “I never see her anywhere.”

  I thought about pointing out that just because he hadn’t seen her—where? The grocery store? Gas station?—that didn’t mean she was a hermit. But I decided to keep my mouth shut.

  “She’s a professor at UB,” Tessa said. “Sculpture.”

  “So that means . . .” Tyler appeared to be doing some calculating in his head, and then he looked at me. “Are you the one who broke up the band?”

  “What?” Across the yard I could see our friend Evie standing on a chair, dancing to Ms. Swift.

  “Meg had a baby, right?” Tyler said. “And that was it.”

  “The baby was her sister, dipshit,” Tessa said, and then looked over at me.

  “Could have been me,” I said. “Maybe I was the tipping point.” I leaned close to Tessa’s ear. “You have a salty mouth tonight,” I whispered. Tessa shrugged.

  But Tyler wasn’t paying attention to Tessa anyway. He leaned way back in the lawn chair and looked at me as if he was going to say something very serious.

  “Is your mom dating anyone?” he asked.

  My exhale came out as a laugh. “Why?” I said. “Do you want her number?”

  Ben laughed. Tyler shrugged, smiling.

  “Maybe.” He set his bottle down on the ground, making a clinking sound on the slate tile. “I just meant, is she dating another musician?” He leaned forward. “I guess I was hoping for some stories.”

  “No,” I said. “She’s not dating anyone at all. And she doesn’t really talk to many of the people from her old life anymore, so I don’t have any stories.”

  He appeared to consider this. “Maybe she’s a lesbian,” he said.

  “Tyler,” Ben said. His voice was calm, and there was both a smile and a warning in it.

  “She’s not a lesbian,” I said, shaking my head. I thought about what my mother would say if she were here, or rather, what she wouldn’t say. She’d probably just sit back and listen to the whole thing with an amused smile on her face.

  “Hey,” Tyler said, shrugging, “there’s nothing wrong with being a lesbian.”

  “Phoebe’s aunt Kit is a lesbian,” Tessa said in a thoughtful voice, as if she was trying to be helpful. “So is my cousin Christy.” I gave her a look that said irrelevant and turned back to Tyler.

  “Of course there’s nothing wrong with being a lesbian,” I said. “But my mother isn’t one. She just doesn’t need to have a man around all the time.” I tilted my head. “Right now, I can really see why.”

  He put both his hands up, palms toward us, as if to say okay. “Tell me something, though. Do you know the other rock-star kids? Like Frances Bean?”

  “Oh, totally,” I said. “We have a little club. We meet once a month and Frances Bean always brings the blow.” Ben met my eyes then, shaking his head, and mouthed, Sorry.

  I wasn’t even sure which drug blow was, but Tyler didn’t have to know that.

  Just then I heard a peacock scream again, a chilling, humanlike screeching.

  “Is that the zoo, or is someone being gruesomely murdered?” I turned to Tessa. “Come on, let’s get out of here before the killer birds show up.”

  Tessa set her beer bottle on a metal table and stood up, a little wobbly on her feet.

  “Do you have to go?” Tyler said. He was still sitting, holding the arms of his chair like a king on a throne. I decided then that he wasn’t obnoxious, exactly, just overconfident. He was even a little funny. I figured I could deal with him if Tessa wanted him.

  “We should go,” I said.

  Ben punched Tyler in the arm. “You’re the one who is scaring them away! Do something!”

  “Phoebe’s the boss,” Tessa said, swaying a little. “Phoebe’s always the boss.”

  Ben actually stood up when we were leaving, like I imagined a gentleman would. It seemed like he wanted to shake my hand or something, but we couldn’t quite make it happen. There was some awkward gesturing. I could feel a smile move slowly across my lips.

  Out on Parkside, cars whispered by, making shushing sounds on the pavement. It was late, and there was a slim eyelash of a moon in the corner of the sky, cracking open one small piece of the night. Sea lions barked through the cool night air. We walked quickly, quietly, until we came to the streetlight.

  “So Lacrosse Boy’s name is Tyler,” I said, as the light changed. We stepped into the street.

  “What?” Tessa said, snapping her eyes toward me. “No. Lacrosse Boy’s name is Ben.”

  I could feel my heart sink as she said it, as clearly as if she had tied a metal fishing weight to it and dropped it in the middle of the sea. I saw it spinning through the water, saw the flash of metal
catching moonlight as it fell. I looked away from Tessa then, toward the zoo. The giraffes’ yard was empty now, just a square of green grass. It looked so small.

  “Oh,” I said to Tessa, but what I thought was, Shit.

  When I think about it now, I’m pretty sure that I could feel what was happening.

  I think I already knew things were going to fall apart.

  six

  MEG

  AUGUST 1999

  WHEN I CLOSED THE DOOR to the loft I was still shaking. I wondered if Phoebe could feel it, strapped to my chest in her baby sling. She was asleep—she’d been sleeping since the playground, and straight through the two blocks it took for us to walk back to our building. Though really I’d been doing something closer to running to keep up with Kieran’s long strides, his right hand holding my left, pulling me along. He held Luna with his other arm, and I could see that she wasn’t afraid. She was smiling at me, hanging on to Kieran’s shoulder, her hair shining in the late-August sun. But that didn’t make me feel better.

  We didn’t speak the whole time we walked back—we were moving too fast for that. But now, when Kieran set Luna down in the corner where we kept her toys, I walked to the other side of the loft and he followed.

  “Where were you?” I asked. “You said you’d be there at three.”

  He raked his hand through his hair. “The interview ran over,” he said. “I called but you had already left.” He pointed to the blinking light on the answering machine as if that were explanation enough.

  “Yes, because we said three. I left at two fifty.”

  “I’m sorry, Meg,” he said. “I got distracted.” He sat down on the couch. “Come here.”

  I sat down carefully, trying not to wake Phoebe in her sling. Moving like this—with a baby attached to my front—reminded me of being pregnant, that top-heavy feat-of-physics feeling that causes you to move like a modern dancer on muscle relaxers. And that big, bright, wide-open room felt like a stage, though even I didn’t want to see the show playing there that day.

  I’d loved the apartment as soon as I saw it, loved the water view and the open living room and kitchen, the bedrooms tucked away at the back. Now my memory flashed on a different version of this apartment: empty, the first time we saw it, following our Realtor in her black pumps and panty hose around the rooms. I was five months pregnant and wearing a short skirt and one of Kieran’s flannel shirts. I can remember my reflection in the bathroom mirror, and the way my Doc Martens looked against the smooth wood floor. One of our favorite pizza places was just two blocks away, next to the hole-in-the-wall sushi place where we ate all the time before we had money.

  “We could get to Sakura in less than five minutes if we walked fast,” Kieran had said then, slipping his arms around me and burying his face in my neck. He laughed. “That pretty much makes our decision for us, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess it does,” I said. That and the view of the river from the window, sapphire blue and sparkling like broken glass. Not to mention the playground I’d seen from the taxi, where the baby in my belly would play some day.

  Where we had been earlier.

  We went to the playground because I wanted Luna to be able to go down the slide. She was two and she’d never been to a playground in her own city. I wanted to put her on the swings. I wanted her to know what the last few days of summer felt like.

  And it was fine . . . at first. Kieran was late, but that was nothing new. The only ones who noticed us were a few teenagers walking home from school. For a while they just sat on a bench and watched so they could decide if it was really me. I didn’t mind signing their notebooks when they got up the guts to come over, or smiling while they told me their favorite tracks from our new record. But then two photographers showed up. Freelance, I figured, because they didn’t tell me where they were from. One tried to put his camera right in Luna’s face, and I heard her call for me, her voice small and scared. I couldn’t see her, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe at all, as if someone were squeezing my rib cage. As if there weren’t any air left in the world. The other photographer stood five feet away from me, his face hidden behind his camera.

  “Meg! Can we see the baby?”

  I didn’t say no. I didn’t say anything. I just tried to get to Luna, but he wouldn’t let me pass.

  “Get out of my way,” I said, and it came out like a growl. Luna was crying by now, and I managed to lurch past him and grab her hand.

  “Come on, Meg,” the photographer said, his camera still clicking. “Just let us get a few shots.”

  I pulled Luna into my hip, and then, out of nowhere, Kieran appeared and scooped her up. He stopped for a fraction of a second in front of the photographers while they flashed away, and then he took my hand.

  Now, remembering, I felt that same anger well up inside me. “You posed for them,” I said.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Kieran said. “I didn’t pose. I paused. I was trying to figure out where to go.”

  “You go out,” I said. “You get away.”

  “I was trying,” Kieran said, but I shook my head. Luna was pretending to read to herself on the floor, a book with a purple raccoon on the cover.

  “Anything could have happened,” I said. I could feel the tears at the edge of my voice. “I was scared.”

  “Meg,” Kieran said. “they were photographers. Not random maniacs.”

  “They acted like maniacs,” I said. Kieran put his hand on mine, but I pulled it away.

  “What if this was a mistake?” I said.

  “What?”

  “All of it.” I shook my head. “Thinking we could have Shelter and a family at the same time.” I put my palm on Phoebe’s warm, fuzzy head. She slept on. “I don’t want the girls to grow up like this.”

  “Babe, it was one bad experience,” he said. He took my chin between his fingers, looked right in my eyes.

  “Right,” I said. “And it’s the first time she’s been to a playground. Ever.”

  “She won’t remember,” he said. “We’ll take her again, and it’ll be better. That was just bad luck.”

  The week before we’d been in Chicago for a festival on the lake, our first show since Phoebe was born. We played into the washed-out sunshine of early evening, and I sang so hard my voice was scratchy and raw. When we got back to the hotel the girls were already asleep. Kit was too, stretched out on the king-sized bed next to Luna. I didn’t wake her.

  In the morning we all ate blueberry pancakes and melon in the hotel restaurant. I saw a couple of girls at a table in the back, early twenties, watching us and whispering to each other. A few minutes later, one of them came over with a flyer from the festival.

  “Would you mind signing this?” she asked. I didn’t say anything, but I tried to smile.

  “Of course,” Kieran said. She handed him a pen and he took it. He scrawled his name across the page. He handed me the pen, and I signed below.

  Luna looked on, watching us.

  “Would you like to sign it too?” the girl said. Luna’s face broke out in a smile and she picked up the green crayon with which she’d been drawing earlier. She drew a loopy scribble near the bottom of the paper.

  “Thanks, Luna,” the girl said. Hearing this stranger say my daughter’s name made me shiver, but no one noticed. The girl went back to her table and Kieran started eating again, but I didn’t feel hungry anymore.

  “Starting her young,” Kit said, a smile in her voice. I looked at her, and she seemed surprised by my expression. She frowned.

  Kieran shrugged. “It’s part of the game,” he said.

  I looked at him. “Our lives are not a game.”

  “It’s just an autograph,” Kieran said. “Price of admission.”

  Admission to what? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t.

  Now, in our living room, I looked at him. “You love it,” I said. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You love that everyone knows us.”

  He snapped his head toward me. “And you don
’t. You never have.”

  In the light from the window, I could see the scar that ran along his jawline, fine as silk thread. He fell off his bike when he was six years old and his family was on vacation on Cape Cod. His mother told me that story the first time I met her at that same cottage, my feet in the sand.

  I almost reached out to touch Kieran then, to trace the scar on his jaw or rest my fingers on his shoulder. I think I wanted to make sure he was still real. A person—not a rock star. Not an icon. Flesh and blood.

  But then he bent down to take his guitar from the stand and turned away toward our bedroom. Phoebe kept sleeping, her head against my chest. I could feel her breath, soft as dandelion fluff. Luna leaned forward and chose a new book.

  There was a photograph of us on the wall, blown up to fill the space over the sofa. Our friend Alex took it, and after Kieran passed it to Rolling Stone, Alex enlarged it and had it framed for us. We’re onstage in Portland, way back when Sea of Tranquility was new. In some other time and place, my hair shines in amber lights. I’m looking across the stage toward Kieran, my mouth open in a delighted smile. And he’s looking back, right at me, his left hand forming a G chord on the frets of his guitar. We look like we’re having so much fun.

  There on the couch, I couldn’t even remember if that was true.

  seven

  THE SKY ABOVE THE CLOUDS is Windex blue, so bright it hurts my eyes. So I close them and listen to the whoosh and hum of the plane’s engines, feeling their vibrations through my seat. I’ve only flown by myself twice before, most recently in February to see Luna in the city, but I like the anonymity of it. I could be anyone, sitting here next to the window with a plastic cup of orange juice and ice, an empty packet of pretzels and a paper napkin. No one needs to know anything more than my snack choice right now.

  When we’re halfway to New York and the virtual airplane on my seat-back monitor is turning south somewhere around Binghamton, I take out the magazine even though I told myself I wasn’t going to do it. It’s weird, I know, to carry around such an old magazine, as if I were some time traveler from 1994 who just scrubbed off her maroon lipstick in the airport bathroom.