Waking the Moon

news about the Divine, and I’ve been thinking of calling you, but I didn’t know how to find you. Did you hear about Baby Joe?”

She nodded, her expression guarded. “Yeah. I meant to call you when it happened.” She sank onto the couch, tugging at her cowlick. “I know this is totally nutso, me just showing up like this—”

“No—I’m glad, Annie, really, I’m so happy you—”

“Well, you might not be so happy when you hear why I came.” She sighed and leaned back into the couch. “God, I’m so exhausted. Can I crash here tonight?”

“Tonight? Sure, Annie, of course—” A little warning beeper went off in my head, reminding me that tomorrow was Dylan’s birthday: I’d have to find some polite way of kicking Annie out by then. “You look beat. Don’t you want something? I think there’s some orange juice—”

“Orange juice sounds great. You know, I had some of that stuff on the train the other night—that Pernod shit you used to drink in school.” Annie shook her head. “Now I know why you were always so nuts.”

I hopped into the kitchen and got the juice. Dylan was finishing off the chips and salsa; before I could say anything he started into the other room. I hurried after him.

“Dylan—uh, wait a sec—”

Annie looked up just as the two of us came through the doorway. The blood drained from her face. For a moment I thought she was going to scream.

“Annie! This is Dylan—Dylan Furiano.” I gestured weakly at Dylan with the glass of orange juice. “He’s—he’s Angelica’s son,” I went on breathlessly. “Annie is a friend of mine. We all went to college together. Your mom and Annie and I. Dylan’s father was Angelica’s husband in Italy,” I ended, willing Annie not to bring up Oliver’s name.

“Hi,” said Dylan politely. He smiled at Annie. She nodded—too fast, as though someone in a dark alley had just asked for her wallet.

“Yeah,” she replied in a hoarse whisper. “I—Angelica? Angelica di Rienzi?”

“She’s my mother.” He peered more closely at Annie. ‘You look kind of familiar…”

I slapped my forehead: I was not handling this well at all. “Dylan, this is Annie Harmon—Annie Harmony, I guess you are now, huh?” I gave Annie an anxious look. I had the uneasy feeling that everyone in the room was covering for someone else, except for me. I was standing all alone out in the field, waiting to be plowed down.

“Annie Harmony?” Dylan tilted his head, suddenly exclaimed, “The singer?”

“Dylan,” Annie was saying, her voice carefully modulated. “Angelica’s son Dylan. And—”

I coughed loudly; I would have kicked her if I’d been a few inches closer. Annie whistled and gave me a sideways glance, her dark eyes narrowed so that she looked like an animal that’s just been poked with a stick.

“Sweeney Cassidy and Angelica’s son Dylan,” she said. “Dylan and Sweeney. Now I must have missed the pilot for this show, because I am very surprised to—”

Dylan stepped around Annie to stand awkwardly beside me. “I bet you girls have hair and fingernails to discuss, so maybe I’ll go pick up something for dinner. Is that okay, Sweeney?”

“That’d be great, Dylan. Thanks.”

He leaned down to brush his lips against my cheek. “See you later, Sweeney. Annie—”

Annie nodded, forced a smile so false I was glad Dylan was out the door before he could see it. I watched him go, then turned to Annie and said, “Well, hey, how about that orange juice.”

Annie glared at me. Her face was dead white except for a fiery red spot on each cheek. “Yeah? Well hey, how about telling me who the fuck that is?”

I bit my lip. “Well, actually, Dylan is—”

“I know who he is! Anyone with half a brain can see who he is! The hell with Angie—that’s Oliver’s kid!”

She began to pace furiously across the room, punching the air with her fist. “Jesus Christ, Sweeney! I almost had a heart attack—I thought he was Oliver. What is he doing here? What are you doing—”

I shoved my hands into my cutoffs and glared back at her. “What am I doing? I live here—”

“What is he doing here?”

“He lives here! What are you doing here?”

Annie stopped and stared down at the harvest table. She reached for the sea urchin lamp, moving her fingers across its tiny raised nodes as though she were reading braille. Suddenly her expression changed. “I remember this,” she said softly. “This was Angie’s…”

I nodded. “She—she sent me that for Christmas, that first year…”

“That only year,” Annie said, but there was no malice in her voice. “It always sort of gave me the creeps, this lamp. But it looks pretty in here.” She sighed and turned, leaning against the table. “Man, it’s hot. Where’s that orange juice?”

I handed it to her, went and got the rest of the pitcher. “Here—” I poured her another glass. “Why don’t you sit, Annie? It’s too hot, and we don’t have air-conditioning.”

I could see her flinch when I said we, but she said nothing, just flopped onto the sofa and rested the glass against her forehead for a few minutes.

“Okay,” she said at last. “I feel better now. At least I don’t feel like I’m gonna run screaming out into the street and have fits.”

I laughed. “Why not? Everyone on Capitol Hill has fits.”

Annie sighed. “Right—Capitol Hill. Baby Joe said you lived on Capitol Hill.”

I hesitated, then asked, “Is that—is that why you came here? To tell me about Baby Joe?”

Annie shook her head. “No. Not really. I mean, if I just wanted to tell you about Baby Joe, I would’ve called, probably. No, this is—well, this is a little more than that.” She fixed me with a sharp glance. “A lot more.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Annie,” I settled next to her on the couch, reached over to give her a tentative hug. “Try me. I’m more open-minded than I used to be.”

She snorted. “No kidding. Open-minded Sweeney Cassidy, the girl with a hole in her head. I’m sorry—it’s just a shock, you know? I haven’t seen you in—what? Nineteen years?”

“Twenty, almost.”

“Twenty years! And here I walk in and it’s like a fucking time warp, you and Oliver…”

“Yeah, well, imagine how I felt.”

Annie rested her elbows on her knees and looked at me, head cocked. “All right, girl. Shoot. Tell me how it felt.”

I told her about Dylan. Everything about Dylan, up to and including about how the night before at Kelly’s he’d asked me to marry him.

Annie cupped her chin in her hand. “And you said you’d wait for him to grow up, no matter how long it takes. How romantic.”

“Fuck you, Harmon. I told him I’d marry him in a New York second.”

“Wow.” Annie looked at me with wide eyes. “Really? You said yes?”

“Of course I said yes! I’m in love with him, Annie.” I tried to keep my voice from sounding desperate. “He’s—he’s everything I never thought I’d find. He’s everything in the world to me,” I said softly. “Everything.”

I looked up, expecting to see Annie’s mocking gaze or worse, her anger. Instead she was staring at me as though she’d somehow walked into a stranger’s carriage house; which, I guess, she had.

“You said you’d marry him. Too much. And obviously he doesn’t know who his real father is,” she mused. “Which is probably for the best…

“Well. He sounds nice,” she said after a long silence had passed. “Really, he does. I guess it’s just that— well, some kind of intense stuff has happened to me in the last couple of months.”

“Like what?”