“Oh, sure,” she said. “Just come over in a little while. Give me some time to work this out. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. And I crossed my fingers for both of them as she walked through the yard toward home.
Around eight o’clock, when it was just beginning to get dark, Norman pulled in to the driveway. I stood at my window and watched him unload some groceries; there was celery poking out of one bag. He went around the side of the house, his sunglasses perched on his head, toward his apartment. But just as he turned the corner he looked up at me.
I stepped back. I’d already changed my outfit twice, and finally decided to carry an optional shirt so Isabel could make the final decision.
Mira was parked in front of the television, eating carrot sticks and settling in for an evening of pay-per-view Cage Fighting before the eclipse. She was painting her toenails.
“I’ll see you at twelve-fifteen,” I told her as I stood behind her chair, watching a wrestler I didn’t recognize pull the Lasso Brothers off the sides of the cage by their legs.
She turned around and smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Meet me out front.”
I picked up my shirt and walked next door, stopping at the hedge when I saw Isabel sitting on the porch, still in the same outfit. She had a beer in her hand.
“The card didn’t work?” I said.
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do,” she said, running her finger around the mouth of the bottle. “I mean, I’ve never seen her like this.”
“She’ll be okay,” I said.
“I don’t know.” The house was lit up and empty. I wondered if Morgan had even come out of the bedroom. “Frank’s supposed to be picking me up for a party in fifteen minutes and I don’t even think I can leave her.”
“Well,” I said, holding up my shirt, “you can at least help me get ready. Which one?”
She glanced up. “I don’t know, Colie.”
“Come on, Isabel.”
She put down her beer. “I can’t help you, okay? Not tonight. This is—this is just too much.”
“But you promised.”
“Well,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m sorry.”
I just stood there. Behind Mira’s house I could see the light spilling out from Norman’s room. “I can’t do it without you,” I said. “You know how to do the makeup and my hair, and everything. If it wasn’t for you—”
“No,” she said. Her voice was tired. “That’s not true.”
“What am I going to do?” I asked her. “I can’t just go like this.”
“Of course you can,” she said. “You’re beautiful, Colie.”
“Stop it,” I said. She sounded like my mother through all those Fat Years: You’re beautiful. You have such a pretty face.
“You don’t need me.” She stood up. “You never did. I didn’t do anything but dye your hair and smear on a bunch of makeup. What you were that night at the beach was just you, Colie. It was all you. Because for once, you believed in yourself. You believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world.”
The rest of the world. ”No,” I said.
“It’s true.” And she smiled, a sort of sad half smile. “It’s like the hidden secret that no one tells you. We can all be beautiful girls, Colie. It’s so easy. It’s like Dorothy clicking her heels to go home. You could do it all along.”
Inside the house I heard a door open, then shut. There was a flash of something that had to be Morgan.
Isabel turned around. She’d seen it too. “Go on,” she said. “Have fun, Colie. A first date is a big thing. Enjoy it.”
“But—” I said. There was so much I wanted to say, to ask her. Frank was already pulling up, even as Isabel walked to the door and knocked on it again.
“Morgan,” she said. She sounded so tired. “Please let me in.”
I backed off the porch as Frank got out of the car. And then I slipped back to Mira’s and up to my room, to get myself ready for my date and the moon.
Norman was waiting for me with candles lit, a funky quilt spread across the floor, and soft music--the Dead, naturally-- playing in 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.”