“I don’t think Mariana wants to go back,” Luna tells her mother. “She wants . . .” Luna doesn’t finish the sentence, because she doesn’t know what Mariana wants, only that it is something she doesn’t yet have.
“Did the police call today?” her mother asks.
“They’ll only call if they have something new to tell us. Remember?”
“Oh,” says her mother. “Yes.”
“There’s nothing new,” says Luna, and she is suddenly angry at her mother, for her job and her feet and the way she lets the TV blare all day and all night. Luna picks up her bag, heavy with her American-history book. This quarter they are studying the American Revolution, George Washington crossing the Delaware, no taxation without representation, liberté, égalité. Without saying good-bye, Luna leaves for her 6:00 p.m.–to–2:00 a.m. kitchen shift at Revel.
One month later Luna’s mother asks for the savings-account passbook. “I need to go back home,” she says. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t just sit here. If she comes back, you’ll see her. If she goes back to Matapalo, I’ll see her. It’s better to spread out.” Her mother’s face, since Mariana disappeared, has fallen into itself, like her cheeks are the roof of a house that has lost its beams.
Luna sees many flaws in her mother’s logic, but she does not describe them. She merely nods. Spread out. Like they have lost a dog in the greening sesame fields of Matapalo. Spread out, call her name, promise her treats and kisses. Luna has been saving for college, but she hands over the passbook. The college money never felt real anyhow. Luna has watched the number grow over the years to a figure that seems impossible. And it is. An impossibility. Luna has a 3.95 GPA, plays varsity softball, and works nights in the kitchen at Revel Bar + Restaurant. Her school counselor, Ms. Jasmine, tells her she has a shot at a good school, maybe UVA or UFlorida. Stay southern, only state schools with lower tuition. Study for your SATs, don’t get into the drug scene. Go straight home after work at night. Ms. Jasmine knows Mariana, knows the kinds of things she was doing before she disappeared.
“Okay then, go back,” Luna says. “I’ll stay here. I’ll keep looking.”
On the morning of her mother’s departure, Luna helps her pack. “Where will you stay?” Luna asks, sliding small plastic bottles of shampoo into a larger plastic bag.
“With Auntie Rosario at first. Then I’ll find a place.”
“Will you see Papi?”
Her mother shakes her head. “Not if I can help it.”
“I’ll send money,” Luna says. Her mother nods, as if this is expected, as if this is nothing.
Luna folds up a thin towel, Miami Sexy Baby! printed in curling pink script across the fabric, and places it in the suitcase.
“I’ve paid up rent here until May, and then you’ll have to move,” her mother says. Luna watches her click the suitcase closed. “You’ll be okay, Luna,” her mother says, and kisses her forehead. “You are always okay. I know.”
Joe listened to Luna’s story without comment, only a few nods, head shakes. This was rare, Luna speaking this way about her family. He did not want her to stop.
At the end he took her hands. “Your mother sounds very wise,” he said. “She knows you. You are okay.”
Luna shrugged. “Actually she’s a fool. Mariana never went back there, and I can’t find her here.” She paused. “My mother had two daughters. Two. And now she has none.”
* * *
Joe thought often about his sisters. He missed them. He knew he had fucked up, but he couldn’t identify the how or why of it. He kept telling himself he would visit them, he would apologize for everything, that whatever it was they wanted him to say, he would say it. He would throw himself at the feet of his family. But he wasn’t ready, not yet. Before you can lie down, you first must stand up. Didn’t someone say that once?
Maybe Miami had been a mistake. All the partying, the job about which he felt only ambivalence. He was alone, with no one’s expectations bearing down on him or assumptions buoying him up. He could do anything, and no one would care. He could fall, and no one would pick him up. This was terrifying, but clean in a way. Honest. Every morning he woke in a dark room, the alarm rattling, and wondered what would happen. Would he drink today? Would he call Felix? Would he call Renee? Would he find his strength? Joe considered these questions with a detached, clinical curiosity, and then he pushed himself out of bed and into the day.
Before Miami, Sandrine had formed part of the picture in his head of what his life should be. Within a gold, ornate frame, she stood beside him, beautiful, blond, with a neat, clean smile and fingernails painted pink. But that picture had disappeared completely: there was no Sandrine, there was no gold frame, there was no life as he’d previously imagined it. There was only Joe alone surrounded by sea and sky.
And into this space came Luna. Joe held no picture in his head of their life together. Every day Luna became something different, something altogether unexpected. She didn’t care what he’d done, the good or bad of it; she knew him only now, in this moment of drift. She was drifting, too, he could see it, and yet when he stood beside her, he felt anchored, secure. Even on the days they were at their worst, the days he saw them both as weak, he felt there was more to them than the weakness. Luna made him feel a potential. Hope was too sentimental a word for it. Faith was too sanctimonious. But it was something like that. Something grand.
He wanted to explain all of this to Fiona. Of his three sisters, he always felt the most comfortable with her. But she was writing a sex blog now, not poetry, and sleeping with dozens of men, describing their weaknesses and flaws, all the things they’d done wrong. How was that empowering? he wondered. How was that art? It tore people down. It was Caroline who sent him the link, no comment, just the word Fiona. He’d felt a jolt of happy surprise to hear from his sister, swiftly undercut by the contents of the blog. The Last Romantic.
And so, two days after the e-mail arrived from Caroline, Joe picked up the phone and called Fiona. She was surprised to hear from him, she said, but glad he had called. For a spell he considered telling Fiona about Luna, but no. He wasn’t ready to share her. His sisters had judged Sandrine so harshly; he didn’t want to subject Luna to their scrutiny, not yet.
Joe had always liked the lilt of Fiona’s voice, the way she told a story, and so he listened for a bit to updates on her job, her revolving cast of housemates. Then he asked:
“Fiona, have you heard of The Last Romantic?”
“Sure. I’ve heard of it. New feminism. I read it every week.” Fiona’s voice had shifted. Now she was carefully casual, on guard, and immediately Joe knew it was true.
“Who do you think writes it?” he asked.
“It’s anonymous. Who knows? It could be anyone.”
“I think I know who it is.”
“Yeah?”
“I think I know her pretty well.”
Silence from Fiona. Joe knew that at this moment his sister was twisting a curl around an index finger. When she was a kid, the hair twist happened in any circumstance of stress or discomfort. Scary movie, fight between Caroline and Noni, studying for a math test. The memories washed over him all at once, a composite picture that made his chest contract. But Fiona was not a kid anymore.