You Have Seven Messages (16 page)

“I can do that.”

“Great. Here’s my card with my cell on the back.”

As I leave the offices, the homeless are now inside, aside from a few still lingering on the sidewalk. One man with red hair and a sunburned face is washing his feet with a gallon jug of water, pouring it over his callused toes. I take out my small digital camera and shoot, but then he barks at me so I scuffle away.

I email Levi a huge thank-you letter when I get home. I study math until my eyes hurt and my head throbs. Still no cello, but at the moment I’m too tired to care. Could I really be getting an agent and having a show? I realize that JJ never mentioned my father. Maybe he doesn’t even know who he is! Unlikely, but I’m going with it. This Moon needs to shine on its own.

By the end of my math final my head is swimming with angles and theorems. I really have no idea how I did it, but I’m just glad it’s over. The fire of that happiness is further fueled by the text I get from Daria as soon as I walk into the hallway:

I find myself jumping up and down a little. Some boys walk by giggling but I don’t really care. Suddenly high school seems meaningless. I text her back:

Last night I had Elise look over the contract and she said it was a go. She used to work at a magazine and said it’s superstandard. It was more than a little weird that she
signed it as my “guardian” because Dad’s out of town, but I was actually grateful.

After school I drop off the signed contract with Miss Bangs. There are no homeless people, just a couple fighting—the woman in tears, the man hot with rage. I can’t help but think about the night my mother died. Was the last message from my father? Was there a scene like this on the street? I look down and hurry past, trying to avoid their drama that should be played out behind closed doors. Sometimes in New York there is no such thing as privacy. People just spill themselves out onto the streets, and it’s not always attractive.

When I get home Tile is on our stoop playing a video game. For as long as I can remember, every Thursday he has gone to his friend Jasper’s house. I look at him without having to ask the question.

“I’m sick of Jasper right now.”

“Oh. But did his parents just leave you here?”

“No, I kinda took off.”

“Tile! Uh, I have an interview for this Brooklyn zine. You’re going to have to come with.”

“I can stay here, I’m not going to burn the house down.”

Suddenly I wish I had parents. Or at least a father who was actually around right now.

“It’s cool, just come with me, but be a fly on the wall, okay?”

“I can handle that.”

The magazine is called
Electric
and is housed in the back of a bakery. Tile gives the baker a big smile and gets a cupcake on the house. The place smells of cinnamon and ink, an odd combination, just like running a magazine out of a bakery. In the back we are introduced to Sal, who has greasy black hair and a silver bone through his left eyebrow.

“Did that hurt?” Tile asks.

So much for my fly-on-the-wall theory
.

Sal just smiles and asks us to sit down.

“We are doing a spread on young artists, and your friend Deidre—”

“Daria.”

“Daria emailed me a few shots.” He pulls out a little recorder and says, “Do you mind?”

“No.”

Sal asks me a bunch of dumb questions like where do I go to school, and Tile starts playing his video game. As the questions get deeper, I feel more self-conscious having Tile there, like he’s this obvious sign that I’m still just a kid, with a baby brother I have to look after, that maybe I’m not this hot photographer on the rise. Tile pretends to be absorbed in his game but I can tell he’s listening intently with one ear.

“What inspires you?” Sal asks.

“The way unexpected things go together. How stuff in the world can be … mismatched … but still graceful.”

Tile flashes me a quick look. He knows I’m winging it.

“What was it like growing up with Jules Clover as your father?”

I don’t say anything. I just stare at an old coffee cup on the table, ringed with a stain.

“We made forts out of his scripts,” Tile says.

Sal apparently likes this, as his mouth slides into a wide smile. Then he notices my discomfort and says, “I take it you feel the pressure of living in his shadow?”

“Well, you are the first person to bring it up, really. I suppose I get some of my vision from him, but I don’t want to be known as ‘the daughter of Jules Clover.’ ”

“Fair enough,” Sal says.

After a few more questions, Sal leads us back out through the bakery, which is now packed with people buying cupcakes. Tile recommends the vanilla to an older woman who smiles and pats his head. I don’t think anyone has patted my head in a whole month, and wonder if that stage is finally over.

On the way home, Tile says, “You know, the guy just asked the dad question ’cause he had to. It’s not like he can ignore it. It’s news.”

“What are you, a journalist now?”

“No, just a fly on the wall.”

I smile and put my arm around him. I want to keep all this adult information I’ve been receiving away from him, but I know he’s too smart. He probably already knows or
at least senses what really happened with our parents. But I’m going to try my hardest to protect him. In my eyes, he’s still just a small flower, and I feel like I’m becoming a strong tree. There will be storms, and he will need shelter.

Tile sees the IM from over my shoulder. It’s Daria asking me how the interview went. She types that things are happening faster than we thought with my show because another artist dropped out.

“Do you think she has an ulterior motive?” Tile asks, being his clairvoyant self.

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, your pictures are pretty tight,” he says.

I know he’s saying this from an artistic point of view and not because he’s my sibling, and that makes me feel proud. But then he adds an expression he must have picked up from one of my dad’s scripts. “They pack a wallop.”

The phone rings, and it’s finally my father. He sounds out of breath. I realize he’s calling me from a gym, probably
one of those posh L.A. ones. I picture Jodie Foster on the next StairMaster.

“Is Tiley good?”

I can’t deal with pretending everything’s fine anymore.

“Yes. Listen, Dad …” I realize Tile is still in the room. “Why did you lie to me?”

I hear the cardio machine he is on slowly stop, then just his breathing on the line.

“Moon, I didn’t lie, I simply omitted information. We went through this. It’s very complicated.”

I motion for Tile to leave but he refuses to. Instead, he’s furiously writing down something on a pad to show me:
Get to the bottom of it
.

“Well, we’re going to have to get to the bottom of it.”

“Okay, okay. Listen, Elise told me about some photography show, and that you have an agent. Is this really happening?”

“Yes, if you were home you might—”

“That’s great, Moon! I’m going to have Christy get on the horn.”

The first time I met Christy, my dad’s publicist, she secretly gave me a twenty-dollar bill. I remember not wanting to spend it, feeling I didn’t deserve it somehow. I never had the chance to prove anything to her, smiling condescendingly with her blinding white teeth and her Prada bag. It was just because I was the daughter of Jules Clover. And now it’s coming full circle.

“I have an agent, Dad. And nothing is finalized. We
don’t need Christy. But maybe you can invite Orlando if it happens.”

Orlando Bloom is the only celebrity I know as a person. Well, the only one I’m
glad
I know as a person. He worked on a film with my father a long time ago, and he actually lived in our house for a while. It was right around the time the Rachels started being really nice to me—go figure. He was so sweet and kind, and we talked a lot about silly things, not trying to be intellectual, just making each other laugh. It was the best time of my life. He has been my only crush other than Oliver. I knew he was too old for me but as Janine says, sometimes we want what is taboo, or what we can’t have. It makes it more thrilling.

“Done. But you must forward me Daria’s info. I have a few meetings tomorrow and Wednesday and then I fly home Thursday. I arrive too late but we’ll talk the next day. I’m so sorry, I know the timing is off on this, but with the film having unexpectedly done so well at Cannes …”

“Right.”

Tile is chomping at the bit.

“I’m so proud of you, Moon.”

“Luna—that’s going to be my photographer name.”

There is silence, then he says softly, “I know.”

The next night Elise comes over to watch Tile so Janine and I can go to Oliver’s recital. It’s supposed to be his practice run for Paris. In the cab on the way, we talk about my show, which is actually happening now, and I fill her in on the diary, Cole, losing the phone, and Oliver’s absence. It feels good to say it all out loud.

When we arrive, Janine checks her voice mail by the side of the building. I notice there’s a stage entrance and I wander over casually. The door is slightly ajar. I can see frantic-looking parents and a dilapidated table lined with bottles of water. Janine is on her cell phone and not paying attention.

When I see Oliver my breath catches. He’s talking to someone whose back is to me, a girl. His hair is a little frizzy, curling in the fluorescent light. I have an urge to
turn away, but instead I tilt the door open a little wider to see who he’s talking to.

Honestly, I am so not prepared for what I see.

Rachel One?

I make a sound, close to a gasp, and Janine comes running over. Oliver leans down, just like he did to me, and gives Rachel a long, we-know-each-other-really-well kiss. Something crumbles inside me, the architecture of my whole body, and I can barely stand up. I feel weighted down by the ruins.

Rachel One, how perfect
.

“C’mon, we’re going,” I tell Janine.

We walk over to the deli and then sit on a makeshift bench. It’s not until we are almost finished with our big chocolate bar that Janine says, “They made a bet that they could get his attention.”

“Who?”

“The Rachels.”

I can almost feel the blood boiling inside me. “You’re not serious. How do you know this?”

“I overheard them. I was cutting class and hiding in the bathroom.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want you to buy into their crap, I guess. And I didn’t think they’d even go through with it. I’m totally sorry.”

“I feel like everyone is lying to me!”

She puts her hand on my shoulder and I brush it off a
little too aggressively. After a minute, she calmly explains, “They have stooped to an unimaginable low. Rachel told her little mute sidekick that whoever you were pining over, she could have within two weeks.”

“What? That is psycho. I can’t believe I was even friends with them. That’s why she invited me over last week, to grill me about Oliver!”

“Don’t worry,” Janine says, taking the last bite. “Karma’s a bitch.”

“What did they bet?”

“Tickets to
Wicked
.”

“How appropriate.”

Before we get home, Janine gives me a card she made. It’s a picture of a camera, with a girl holding it high above her head. It says:
Good Luck
.

For some reason, it makes me cry. She hugs me goodbye and I feel like a blubbering idiot. When I get in, Tile is asleep with his head on Elise’s lap. She smiles at me and I just wave and head upstairs. I’ve had about enough for one evening.

For some crazy reason I sleep really well, and in the morning I head into the kitchen for some juice. Elise has spilled the sugar again, and it just might be the saddest reminder of my mother being gone. If she had spilled the sugar, she would have cleaned it up immediately. I start to wipe it up and I hear Elise shuffle up beside me.

“Oh, sorry about that. My ex-husband used to follow me around with a sponge. It’s no wonder he went gay.” Her face twists a little. “I knew something was wrong when he arranged the whole closet by color, including the linens.”

I try to smile, but last night’s revelation comes back like a jolt of poison. She must be able to see it in my face ’cause she says, “Rough night?”

I look at her and feel this strange release, as if my heavy judgments of her are vanishing. “It’s going to sound petty, or obvious, but my supposed friends, the Rachels, they made a bet that one of them could steal my boyfriend, which basically happened. The Rachels I can understand, it’s Oliver I cannot. He’s so, I don’t know,
above
them. He was the only boy I’ve ever …”

Suddenly I’m embarrassed, even though she’s acting like it’s no big deal that I’m opening up to her.

“If it was meant to be, he’ll come around.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Well, I’ve had my share of disappointments in the male department. In my opinion they’re all a bunch of whack jobs. Your father isn’t, though. He’s a good soul.”

The fact that she’s talking about my father’s soul seems odd. She barely knows him.

“A good soul who has lied to me.”

She doesn’t flinch at this either, just continues to sip her herbal tea.

“Well, no one’s perfect.”

Her answers are so generic. There must be a side of her that she’s not revealing. If there’s one thing I’m learning through all this, it’s that we all have veneers, the part we show to the world and each other, and some of us have more layers than others. Is Elise that complex? Maybe not. Maybe what she brings to my father’s life is simplicity. But my mother was not a passive woman. She would always challenge us, make us think around things as opposed to about them. She once told me that people have what is called their real voices. When you are with people you truly love, you speak with your real voice, meaning everything you say is the truth. This might be Elise’s real voice.