Keeping the Moon(41)
Author: Sarah Dessen

Yes, that was it. Just some crazy moon thing.

“Chin up,” he said, smudging another line.

“Sorry.”

About thirty minutes had passed when behind me, suddenly, the phone rang. And rang. Three times.

“Do you want me to get that?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“You sure?”

“Chin up, Colie.”

The phone rang again. It was the old kind, a rotary, and loud: normally, I could hear it two floors up. Another ring, and then Norman’s voice crackled over the answering machine.

He was still drawing, not even seeming to notice. There was a beep, and the machine was quiet. I thought whoever had called had hung up. Until I heard it: the sound of someone clearing his throat, as if he was about to say something.

Norman’s eyes were focused on the page. The person cleared his throat again, and I watched as Norman lifted the pencil, holding it above the paper, as if waiting for something.

Click. Then a dial tone. Norman went back to work.

We were silent for at least five minutes before I couldn’t stand it anymore and asked, “Who was that?”

“What?”

“On the phone. Was that a prank call or something?” We’d gotten tons when the Kiki infomercial hit it big. My mother, for some reason, was also very popular with prisoners. “Does it happen a lot?”

“Chin up,” he said, smudging another line. “Eyes right here.”

I readjusted my position, jutting out my chin. “Aren’t you even going to answer me?”

“No,” he said mildly.

“You know, if it’s a prank you can get something to trace it,” I said. It was hard to talk with my chin in the air. “It’s not that hard—”

“I know who it is,” he said quietly, tilting the sketchbook and pushing his hair out of his face.

“Really? Who?”

No answer.

“Norman.”

He put down the sketchbook, dropping his pencil into the coffee can. “Look, Colie,” he said, “don’t you have some things you’d rather not talk about?”

He didn’t say it in a mean way. But something in his tone made me feel like I was a lesser person for even asking.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I do.”

“Then you understand, right?” I nodded as he stood up and dropped the sketchbook on the futon. “Okay, we’re done here.”

“Oh, come on, Norman,” I said, knowing now that I had pushed too far. He was so touchy. “Don’t get mad over that and—”

“No,” he said, interrupting me. “I mean, we’re done. With the sketch.” He stretched his arms over his head, his fingers reaching towards the ceiling, a full-body stretch, like Cat Norman. “And we’ll start the portrait tomorrow, at work. Okay?”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay. But I get to see the sketch, right?”

“Nope.”

“But Norman—”

“Good night, Colie.”

I knew by now not to push my luck. Instead, I took off my sunglasses and got up, making my way past the mannequins and a stack of stained glass, to the door.

When I glanced back, Norman was in the middle of his room, looking up at the protractor mobile. He stood there in the tiny amount of empty space, with all of his objects—bright and colorful—seeming to whirl around him. Now, I’d stepped inside too, and found to my surprise that I liked it there, in Norman’s universe, an eclectic solar system that pulled things in, turned them around, and gave them a new life all their own.

We worked together every day, at the Last Chance during the slow parts of the late afternoon, and in the evenings in his room. The portrait had been important to me, but increasingly, so was Norman.

This, of course, was crazy. But ever since that first night, when he’d brushed my hair out of my face, something was different. Maybe not for him. But for me.

It was little things. Like the routine we’d set up whenever we worked, falling into place automatically without even talking. And I’d carved out a space for myself in his room: beside the chair where I posed at night I kept my sunglasses, the water glass he’d given me the first time I said I was thirsty, and the remote for the TV that he swore he never watched except when I was there. There was something nice about having my things, and I wondered if he looked at them after I’d gone and thought of me.

I was getting used to his crowded room. He had hung the two sunglasses paintings—Morgan and Isabel, and the man leaning against the car—side by side. I’d sit in my chair, looking through my own lenses as they stared back at me, completed, hanging where my own image would be soon. When I passed through Mira’s back room I found myself examining her portrait, too, reaching out to touch the bumpy surface, wondering what I’d look like when he finished.

The first morning I saw Norman at the Last Chance with paint splattered across his arm I got this strange feeling, some sense of possessiveness, like we shared a secret. I almost wished the sitting would never end.

Sometimes he seemed to be looking at me just for form, as if I was a bowl of apples or a landscape. But there were moments when I’d catch him leaning his head to the side, the paintbrush not even on the canvas, those deep brown eyes really watching me and then—

“Hey, Picasso!” an irritated Isabel would yell from inside the restaurant. “I need some onion rings. Now!”

“All right,” Norman would say, putting down his brush. When it got busy he just stuck the canvas in the back of the car, folded 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.