I ask for your total discretion on all accounts mentioned in this letter, until a future, undetermined date.
It might be a good idea, also, if you didn’t broadcast your feelings about Susan, or any other girls. I’m asking this of you for your own good-you wouldn’t want the media to get wind of that.
Please burn this letter once you’ve read it. (I confess-I’ve always wanted to say that.)
All best,
J. Moon
The Orphans
When Sandra came home at two o’clock in the morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table with the letter in front of me.
She paused in the doorway. She looked so small and pretty, her face flushed and her hair wild, her forehead shiny with sweat.
“Mom?” I couldn’t help but call her that. The word felt strange coming out of my mouth, like it didn’t belong to me.
She didn’t correct me this time.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. I’d been sitting there for hours, and my feet were asleep.
She came inside slowly, closing the door silently behind her. She sat down across from me at the table without taking off her coat. Her hair was dusted with snowflakes.
“I didn’t know for sure,” she said. “When I saw that letter, though, I knew who it was from. Look at the postmark. Who else do we know in California?”
Her face was bright, awake. I realized she’d been going on adrenaline, and that maybe she was just as surprised as I was.
“How could you not know?”
She sighed.
“Honey, I’m not exactly proud of certain things I’ve done.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Certain men I’ve done,” she said.
I nodded.
“Me either,” I said.
We stared at each other. I slid the plane ticket toward her.
“What does this mean?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do?”
“It means your father wants to see you,” she said.
“Can I go?” I asked. We both knew I didn’t need her permission, but I wanted her to act like a mother.
“You decide,” she said, “but I think you should.”
“This is crazy,” I said. I’d been staring at the kitchen wall all night, thinking about Johnny Moon—I’d never wanted to call Susan this much. I wanted to call her and tell her everything, but she wasn’t my friend anymore.
I had a feeling that if I could get her on the phone, Susan would want to talk to me about this. That if she knew my dad was a movie star, she would take me back, at least as a friend.
Somehow, that was worse.
Then I thought of calling Corvis, but we’d just spent the past thirty-six hours together, and she didn’t get a tattoo, and I was sure she was still upset about it.
I had Sandra to share it with. My mother.
“You’ll have to tell me what California is like,” said Sandra, smiling. “If everyone is actually made of plastic, if everyone wears high heels.”
“Can you please tell me more about him?” I asked. “Anything at all?”
Sandra sighed.
“I wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted from me. He was nice, but it was almost like he didn’t live in the real world and he wanted to know what it was like. He came, he shook things up, it felt wonderful, and then he was gone,” she said, “like a song you love that you know is eventually going to end.”
I nodded.
“He bought us this house,” she said. “He offered more, but I said no.”
I had so many questions. If he bought us this house, he must have known about me. Why didn’t he reach out sooner? Did he want to keep Sandra? Did she want to keep him? Did they ever talk to each other? Had he seen this house and picked it out for us, or did Sandra pick it out and send him the bill?
“So he’s been here all along, in a way,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, “in a way.”
Sandra’s expression was almost wistful—and more alive than I’d seen since Mr. Blackford died. It was almost like she’d been wanting to share this with me for years, but didn’t know how, or couldn’t.
“I went to Provincetown,” I said. “I got a tattoo.”
Sandra’s eyes widened.
“When?”
“Yesterday,” I said. “It was amazing. Actually, it felt kind of good.”
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” She sounded proud, which was the opposite of what I thought she’d be. She shrugged off her coat, letting it fall to the floor. “Don’t you have to be eighteen to do something like that?”
“I’m almost eighteen,” I said.
“Two and a half months,” she said. “Then you won’t have to steal my cigarettes anymore.”
“Can you tell me everything you remember about him one more time?” I asked.
“I think this calls for some coffee,” said Sandra.
She stood to make it, and I had this delicious feeling, like I was being cared for, but also like we were both adults, like we were friends. I watched the muscles in her arms jump as she lifted the pot and filled it with water, and I settled into my chair, the smell of coffee filling the kitchen.
* * *
—
My eighteenth birthday was June 14, and by then, my life would be completely different, because I would have met my father. Graduation was at the end of May, which seemed both eternities away and also scarily close. Everyone’s obsession with prom stemmed partially from the fact that they were still holding on while also trying to feel grown-up, as if floor-length tulle could age you, as if it could make you ready for what comes next.
I’d never imagined that Susan wouldn’t be my friend when I turned eighteen—that she wouldn’t be the one to make me a cake and throw me a party.
I kept thinking of my seventh birthday. Sandra asked me what theme I wanted my party to have, and I just said, “Old-fashioned.”
She looked at me strangely, with her hand on her hip, probably wondering where the hell I came from.
“What do you mean?” she asked me. Then she asked if I wanted fifties diner food, doo-wop music, and poodle skirts.
“No,” I said. “Old old-fashioned.”
I explained: We would wear bonnets. We would use candles. We would drink tea with cubes of sugar—the square kind of sugar—in a china pot. We would eat salmon. We would jump rope. We would not use flashlights. We would say “alas.”