The Moon and More (23 page)

Judging by the pained look on his face, though, it was easier to say this than to hear it. “I just can’t …” He trailed off. “I can’t believe this.”

“I know,” I said. “Me neither.”

We were both silent for a minute, the only sound cars passing on the road. I thought again of what I’d said to Daisy: nothing changes for three years, and then suddenly everything does, all at once. Maybe those other people’s summers I’d envied weren’t all fun either. You never really know anything until it’s happening to you.

“Well,” he said finally. “I guess … that’s that.”

Breaking up earlier had been hard enough. Doing it again,
and this time because of me, was like torture. “I didn’t plan any of this,” I said softly. “It just happened.”

“Yeah. Well.” He couldn’t even look at me. “I should … I’m leaving.”

And then, for the second time since sunrise, I sat and watched the only love of my life walk away from me. As he did, oddly enough, I kept thinking of Benji, running up the stairs to the outskirts of my father’s earshot earlier, these same words repeated like a spell.

I’m leaving.

I’m leaving.

I’m leaving.

It wasn’t really necessary to say, especially if you were already walking away. Almost redundant. And yet, there was a comfort in there being no question, no room for doubt. I’d assumed I had that earlier from Luke. But I was sure of it now.

“OKAY, SO, UM … I guess first, maybe just say and spell your name?”

Clyde looked at me, then back at the camera. “You don’t know who I am?”

“No, no,” Theo said quickly, “I do, of course. This is just a device to mark frame, have identification. It’s—”

“Completely unnecessary right now,” Ivy finished for him. “My apologies, Clyde. He’s an intern and a novice. Let’s just get started.”

Glancing at Theo, who was squinting through the camera lens, I saw the tips of his ears and much of his face were now red. Maybe you didn’t need to know someone forever to be able to read them from a distance after all. Nervous myself, I stuck another piece of gum in my mouth.

Meanwhile, Clyde was still studying Ivy with the same flat, unreadable expression he’d had since meeting her about a half hour earlier. Finally, he looked back at Theo. “My name is Clyde Conaway. C-L-Y-D-E C-O-N-A-W-A-Y.”

I smiled, then glanced across the Washroom, the Laundromat/café Clyde owned, to check on Benji, who was eating a piece of pie. Theo and Ivy had been so gung ho to get going on the
interview that we’d come straight from the office, so I’d arranged for my father to pick him up from here. Until then, I was plying him with Clyde’s homemade sweets and hoping for the best.

In the end, I had not had to hunt Clyde down; he called me. Or the office, actually, where he was at first just a single line blinking on the phone that Rebecca pushed across the desk. I’d just come back with Benji from a late lunch at Casa Sandbar on the boardwalk and was still chewing my complimentary mint.

“For me?” I said, and she nodded. “Who is it?”

“Didn’t say,” she replied. “Just that it was important.”

I was expecting Theo, since I knew he and Ivy were going nuts over at Sand Castles, wishing I’d go ahead and jump now that they’d told me how high. So it was with some trepidation, to say the least, that I pushed the button and said hello.

“Emaline,” a voice said in response. “It’s Clyde. Got a minute?”

I did. And it took not much longer than that to set up this very interview. Quick and dirty, as my dad would say. He named the time and place, I assured him they’d find it, now here we were. What happened from this point on, however, was anybody’s guess. Which was why I was glad I’d found a fresh pack of Big Red in my purse.

“I’d like to begin,” Ivy was saying now, “with summarizing your personal details. Where were you born?”

“North Reddemane. November twenty-first, nineteen sixty-eight.”

“And your parents were farmers, yes?”

“My father kept dairy cows,” Clyde replied. “Holsteins. My mother taught third grade at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Cape Frost.”

“Which is where?”

Again, Clyde looked at me. It had been clear since I arrived that, as far as he was concerned, there was a clear division here between Us and Them. It made me wonder, yet again, why he’d agreed to do this. Then again, it had been me who told Theo that nothing Clyde did made any sense. At least he was consistent.

“Cape Frost is about twenty-five miles east of here,” he was saying now. “Closest thing to a city we had then. And now, really.”

“And Sacred Heart, was that the school you attended?” Ivy asked.

Clyde snorted. “Nobody from North Reddemane went there. Except the Guadaleris. Right, Emaline?”

“The who?” Ivy asked.

I smiled. “The Guadaleris. Rich and super-Catholic. They could afford the tuition and gas.”

Ivy turned, looking at me. “It would be best if we kept this conversation between ourselves. We’re fine with you observing, but—”

“Hey,” Clyde said, cutting her off. “I asked her something. She was answering.”

She blinked at him. “I understand that. But in a documentary setup, we need the subject to have a relationship only with the camera, not people off screen.”

“Well, maybe she should be on screen,” Clyde said.

Ivy’s expression darkened. Ever since she’d arrived to find Clyde and the situation not exactly to her specifications, she’d been simmering, close to a boil. I would have enjoyed it more had I not been so worried about all of this collapsing for Theo.

“Actually,” I said, holding up my phone. “I need to step out anyway.”

I got up and slid behind the camera setup and out the back door. I could hear Ivy as she took a deep breath, then said, “All right. So you attended school here in town. Was that for all twelve grades?”

Outside, where it was considerably less tense, I returned a text from Daisy (You OK? Call me!)
,
then looked around to see if my father had shown up yet. There was no sign of the Subaru, though, just Clyde’s beat-up truck, my car, and Ivy and Theo’s van, from which they’d earlier unloaded what seemed like an awful lot of equipment for just a single interview.

“Looks like they’re moving in for the duration,” Clyde had said to me then, as we stood in the café watching them run cords around the dryers in the next room. He’d just given Benji the pie menu, which he was studying with such focus it was like he expected to be quizzed on it later.

“They didn’t say how long it would take,” I’d told him. “I think, though, they’ll talk to you as long as you’re willing.”

“Huh,” he said in response, cryptic as always.

“Seriously, though,” I said. “Thanks for doing this. You pretty much made Theo’s life when you agreed to it.”

“Theo?”

I leaned my head towards the dryers. “My friend, from the Big Club this morning. Ivy’s not, um, the easiest boss to impress.”

“Oh.” He nodded. “Right.”

“Razzleberry,” Benji had said, putting down the menu. “Although it was
not
an easy choice.”

“Good pick,” Clyde told him. “Made it fresh last night.”

As Clyde reached into the glass case behind him, I looked back at Theo, who was now adjusting a large light he’d set up behind a folding station. After a second, he glanced up and, seeing me, smiled. Behind him, Ivy, clad in black jeans and a black fitted T-shirt, was flipping through some notes on a clipboard. She looked at him, then at me, her eyes narrowing. I turned back around.

Now, I heard gravel crunching and looked up, expecting to see my father pulling into the lot. Instead, it was my dad. He parked beside my car, then opened the truck door and eased himself out with a familiar end-of-a-long-workday groan.

“Hey,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” he replied. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the office?”

“Got an early reprieve.”

“Really.” I nodded. “From what I heard, sounds like you might have earned it, though.”

“Mom told you about Margo being on the warpath about the towel thing?” I shook my head. “I swear, you have no idea how hard she is to work for. Or even
with
. It’s craziness.”

“Margo?” he repeated.

“Yeah. Isn’t that what you meant?”

Before he could answer, Clyde stuck his head out the door of the Laundromat. “Rob,” he called out squinting at us. “Give me a sec and I’ll show you that ceiling.”

My dad nodded, waving at him, and Clyde disappeared back inside. Just beyond him, I could see Ivy and Theo huddled together. She was talking quickly, gesturing with one hand, while he just nodded. I saw my dad take them in, too, as well as the cords, lights, and equipment.

“They’re shooting a documentary,” I explained.

“Who is?”

I nodded at them. “My friend Theo and his boss, Ivy. It’s about Clyde. They just started interviewing him today.”

“They’re making a movie about Clyde?”

“And his art career. Did you know he was a big deal in New York at one time?”

He looked back inside. “I vaguely remember hearing something about it. Long time ago, though.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it was.”

A car was pulling in behind us now, slowly navigating the small and somewhat crowded lot. Sure enough, it was the Subaru. When my father saw me, he lifted a hand in greeting.

“Is that Joel?” my dad asked.

“Yeah. I’ve been hanging out with Benji. He’s here to pick him up.”

There was a definite awkwardness, standing there with him as my father got out of the car and approached us. It was the same feeling I remembered from those childhood lunches
at Shrimpboats, years ago, with me and my mom and dad on one side of a booth and my father, Leah, and Benji on the other. Us and Them, again.

“Robert,” my father said as he walked up. He stuck out his hand. “Good to see you.”

“You too,” my dad said, shaking it. “How’s Leah?”

“Good,” my father replied, then glanced at me. “What’d you do with your brother?”

“He’s eating pie inside.”

“Pie?” He glanced at his watch. “For dinner?”

Whoops. “It’s berry pie,” I said, like that made a difference.

“Sorry about that.” Clyde came walking up, joining the confab. “Your daughter got me into this documentary thing. Did she tell you?”

They both looked at him, then back at me. And here I thought this couldn’t get
more
awkward. “She did not,” my father said finally. “Is this the Ivy Mendelson project?”

Clyde, clearly confused, looked at my dad, who explained, “This is Joel. Emaline’s father. Joel, Clyde Conaway.”

“Oh,” Clyde said. “Sorry. I didn’t—”

“It’s fine,” I said quickly. “It’s kind of confusing, all of us together.”

“Clyde?” Ivy stuck her head out the door, squinting in the sunlight. “Can I get an idea of when you’ll be able to start up again? We’ve got quite a bit we’d like to cover.”

“Not too long. Gotta talk to a man about some drywall.” She looked confused, as if not sure if this was a euphemism for something. “Fifteen minutes.”

She nodded, not exactly looking pleased, and went back inside. Clyde said to me, “She’s really something, huh?”

“
Exceptionally
talented,” my father agreed, as if this was what he’d meant. “I saw
Cooper’s Way
at the Tribeca festival. Just riveting.”

My dad and Clyde just looked at him. The silence was so excruciating I finally broke it myself. “So Benji’s inside, and …”

“The spot’s in the café,” Clyde finished, turning back to the door. “No crack yet, but it’s sagging. Hate to think what’s weighing it down.”

“Either loose pipe or a leaking one,” my dad replied. “We’ll have to cut in to know for sure.”

We went in single file, Clyde and my dad first, my father and I bringing up the rear. Ivy and Theo, who were watching something on the monitor, barely glanced up. I, however, was more than aware of the oddness of this little parade.

“Watch your step through here,” Clyde said over his shoulder as we wound through the maze of cords. “Emaline’s boyfriend and his boss have the place wired up like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Boyfriend?” my father said from behind me at the exact same moment my dad, up ahead, glanced back.

“There’s Benji,” I said, loudly, like increased volume might change the subject even faster. “He’s been a big help to me today.”

Benji, who’d just stuffed a heaping forkful of pie into his mouth, chewed for a moment, then explained, “There was a
towel situation. The new system involves spreadsheets and everything.”

“Really,” my father said.

“Yeah, but Emaline didn’t use it? So her sister got really mad and had to give us a refresher course.”

My father looked at me. “Sounds exciting.”

“Oh, you know the realty business,” I told him. “Never a dull moment.”

He smiled, and I felt myself relax, relieved he’d apparently let the whole boyfriend comment slide without further comment. Then I glanced at my dad. He was still looking right at me.

With a lot of loud rattling noises, Clyde dragged a ladder out from a storeroom and set it up at the end of the counter. We all watched as my dad climbed up, pulling a flashlight from his pocket once he reached the top. As he tipped his head back, examining the spot, Clyde observed from below with more attention than I’d seen from him since we’d started this whole thing.

I looked over at Theo and Ivy, wondering if they’d noticed this as well. He was crouched down, adjusting some plugs on a power strip while she sat on a dryer, studying her phone. I walked over, leaving Benji regaling my father with more towel details.

“So,” I said to Theo. “How’s it going, you think?”

“Good,” he replied. “I mean, he’s not the most cooperative subject. We knew not to expect that, though.”

“At least he’s answering the questions,” I pointed out.

“Oh, yeah. I think Ivy just needs to get some momentum with him. All these interruptions …” He looked over at my dad, on the ladder, then back at the plugs. “It just makes it hard to get a good rhythm.”

“This shouldn’t take long,” I told him. “And we’ll all be out of your hair pretty soon.”