Keeping The Moon(63)

the background.

“I’ve been slaving over this,” he said. “I hope you’re hungry.”

“I am,” I said. I’d decided on the first shirt I’d chosen and very little makeup, pulling my hair back the way it had been at

the fireworks. I left my lip ring in and told myself to stand up straight, shoulders back. I wanted to believe Isabel, but I had my

doubts.

“You look great,” Norman said. “Here. Have an appetizer.” For the menu, he had made what he called Moon Food, in honor of the

eclipse.

We had small cheese quiches to start. “So you have your cow, the dish and the spoon,” he said. Then salad, with blue cheese

dressing--which as kids, we all knew came from the moon-- and fresh fish from the river on the sound side, the Moonakis (a stretch,

he said, but he’d run out of ideas). And finally, Moon Pies for dessert.

“You,” I said, pointing the last bit of my Moon Pie at him, “can do wonders with a hot plate.”

“It’s a gift,” he explained. He was on his second Moon Pie-- his favorite food, I’d learned.

“I bet,” I said. I looked around the room. During all those hours of sitting I had memorized the portraits, the mobiles, the

mannequins, everything: I knew them all by heart. The only thing new was in a far corner, covered with a sheet, leaning against the

wall.

“You know,” I said, “all this time I’ve been wondering about that painting.”

“Which one?”

I pointed to the far wall, where the man was leaning against the car, still laughing. “That one. Is it your dad?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“He posed for you?”

“No.” He ripped open the plastic of another Moon Pie. “I did it from a photograph. It was taken the day he opened his first

dealership, the one by the bridge. See that car there? It was the first one he sold.”

“Wow,” I said, looking at it more closely “It’s really well done, Norman. He must have liked it.”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “He’s never seen it.” He paused. “I didn’t want to show it to him, because I knew how he

felt about my work. But I’ve always loved that picture, you know? There’s something so cool about capturing a person at a time

when they’re really just, like, the best they can be. Or have been.”

I thought about this, taking in his dad’s broad smile.

“That’s why I keep it there,” he added, brushing crumbs off his lap. “It’s the way I want to think of him.”

We sat there, not talking, for a few minutes. He ate the Moon Pie; only skinny people can scarf down junk food like that. Finally,

I said, “Norman?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you ever going to show me the painting?”

“Man,” he said. “You are, like, so impatient.”

“I am not,” I said. “I’ve been waiting forever.”

“Okay, okay.” He stood up and went over to the corner, picking up the painting and bringing it over to rest against the bright

pink belly of one of the mannequins. Then, he handed me a bandana. “Tie that on.”

“Why?” I said, but I did it anyway. “Norman, you are way too into ceremony.”

“It’s important.” I could hear him moving around, adjusting things, before he came to sit beside me. “Okay,” he said. “Take a

look.”

I pulled off the blindfold. Beside me, Norman watched me see myself for the first time.

And it was me. At least, it was a girl who looked like me. She was sitting on the back stoop of the restaurant, legs crossed and

dangling down. She had her head slightly tilted, as if she had just been asked something and was waiting for the right moment to

respond, smiling slightly behind the sunglasses that were perched on her nose, barely reflecting part of a blue sky.

The girl was something else, though. Something I hadn’t expected. She was beautiful.

Not in the cookie-cutter way of all the faces encircling Isabel’s mirror. And not in the easy, almost effortless style of a girl

like Caroline Dawes. This girl who stared back at me, with her lip ring and her half smile—not quite earned—knew she wasn’t like

the others. She knew the secret. And she’d clicked her heels three times to find her way home.

“Oh, my God,” I said to Norman, reaching forward to touch the painting, which still didn’t seem real. My own face, bumpy and

textured beneath my fingers, stared back at me. “Is this how you see me?”

“Colie.” He was right beside me. “That’s how you are.”

I turned to look at him, studying his face the way, for all those weeks, he had studied mine. I wanted to remember it, not just in

this moment, but from the whole summer into forever.

“Norman,” I said. “It’s wonderful.”

And then he reached forward, as he had in my mind so many times, brushing my cheek as he tucked that one piece of hair behind my

ear. This time, he left his hand there.

I thought of so many things as he leaned in to kiss me: that swirling universe, a million protractors tinkling and finally, that