Keeping The Moon(54)

up the easel, and went back to flipping burgers while I waited tables. When it slowed down we’d drift back outside and take up our

places.

But he refused to show me the painting.

“Bad luck,” he said the first time I asked. “You’ll see it at the end.”

“I want to see it now,” I’d whine. This was one of our sticking points; like my mother, I had a hard time waiting for anything.

“Tough.” Norman could play hardball when it suited him. “It’s a mess now, anyway; it’s all still process. The finished product

is what matters.”

Norman had his secrets. The phone rang almost every night when we were working, around the same time, 10:15. Norman never answered,

and the man on the other end of the line never said a word. He just cleared his throat, as if waiting for someone else to make the

first move.

I wanted to grab the phone, forcing the man—who I knew had to be Norman’s father—to speak. But I couldn’t. So I just sat there,

night after night, gritting my teeth when it rang.

“Norman,” I finally said to him, “please answer the phone. Please? For me?”

He shook his head before answering the same way he always did. “Chin up.”

When we weren’t arguing about the phone, we listened to music. I was—to my horror—almost beginning to appreciate his hippie

bands. Or I turned on the TV and flipped through channels, watching shows until Norman vetoed them. One night I came across the

Kiki infomercial and introduced Norman to the Buttmaster, FlyKiki inspirational tapes, and Stuffin’ for Nothin’. I figured this

was more than a fair trade for Phish and the Dead. Norman was intrigued. He even put down his brush to give his full attention to

my mother’s Super Cal Burn.

“She’s really something,” he said, as she bent and toned, whipping the studio audience into a frenzy.

“I know,” I said. “Sometimes I can’t even believe she’s my mom.”

“Oh, I can,” he said easily, his eyes still on the TV. “I see a lot of her in you.”

“No way.”

“Yep.” He picked up the brush, dipping it back into the paint.

This was new to me. “Like what?”

“Chin up,” he said, and I rolled my eyes. When I did, he continued. “Like your face: it’s just like hers, heart-shaped. And the

way you hold your hands when you talk, right at the waist. And the way you smile.”

I looked at my mother, beaming on national TV “I don’t smile like that,” I said.

“But you do,” he told me, dabbing at something on the canvas. “Look at her, Colie. That’s not fake. On a lot of people it would

be, but you can tell she loves what she does. Loves it.”

I looked back at my mother, listening intently as some woman asked a question about how to get rid of saddlebags. He was right:

with my mother, what you saw was what she felt.

“You know,” he went on, “I think I knew you for about three weeks before I ever really saw you smile. And then, one day, Morgan

said something and you laughed, and I remember thinking it was really cool because it meant something. You’re not the kind of

person who smiles for nothing, Colie. I have to earn every one.”

I wasn’t smiling now. In fact, I was pretty sure my mouth was hanging open and I was blushing. Norman ducked back behind the easel

and I swallowed, trying to compose myself.

What was happening here? I wasn’t even sure it was just in my head anymore.

“Chin up,” he said, and I locked my eyes onto his, even as I imagined him leaning closer, tucking the hair behind my ear, again.

I’d smile, then. No question. “Chin up.”

“It’s coming,” Mira said to me one morning a few weeks later as we sat eating cereal: me, Grape-Nuts, her, Count Chocula.

My days had narrowed to just work and the portrait, and breakfasts were the one time we still had together.

“What is?”

She picked up a folded newspaper and slid it across the table.

LOCAL MAN GROWS BIGGEST TOMATO ON RECORD, the headline said.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Tomatoes?”

“No, no, not that,” she said, reaching over and pointing. “This!”

It was a small blurb at the bottom of the page, right beside the weather for the next day. There was a picture of the moon, and the

words “Full lunar eclipse scheduled to occur August fifteenth reaching totality at 12:32 A.M. If the night is clear it should be a

perfect time for viewing. ”

“The eclipse,” I said. “I forgot all about it.”

“How could you?” she said, taking another spoonful of cereal. “Haven’t you felt how weird things have been lately? I mean, the

cosmos is getting ready to freak out. Big changes coming. I can’t wait.”

Big changes. I thought of Norman, then shook him out of my head. Ridiculous. “It’s still a ways away,” I said.

She turned to her calendar, flipping up the page. I could see the moon drawn in on the fifteenth, the day circled in purple pen. “

Seventeen days and counting….”