Meteorites

by Julie Paul

  Cassie’s father was long gone by this point, having had his fill of family goodness around her eighth birthday, opting for oil work out west, where he sent money from and called it fathering. She didn’t miss him much, except when it became her job to clean out the fireplace, stack wood, catch spiders and mice, and eventually, help her mother into her wheelchair and out again, numerous times a day.

  She met Pete at a party the summer after the year she should have gone away and come back, transformed, to tell the tales. Someone had ripped the pedestal sink from the wall in the house where the party was raging, and the thing began to fountain. Instead of yelling and grabbing towels, Pete was the one who ran to find the main water valve and shut it off.

  They started dating later that week and were married a couple of years later. Her mother lived with them until June was born, then moved into extended care.

  She’d meant to reach further than the next town over, but that was fate for you. You couldn’t always plan the path to your happiness. And wasn’t she happy, doing the things women in this town did, marrying and raising a child with a decent, practical man? Even if having only one child, just as her mother had done, was seen as a little odd, she was content enough. In a settled kind of groove, anyway. Sure, she had a job with a ceiling she’d already touched, and her mother’s care facility barely seemed to meet her needs, and her husband, while having ample plumbing and other hands-on skills, lacked aplomb in most situations, but still. It was her good life, and she would never ask for anything else, and she relayed all of this to Alicia as they sipped coffee from their to-go mugs while they drove into town.

  When they were only a few minutes from the store, two fire trucks, an ambulance, and a police car raced past, sirens screaming, then turned down the old quarry side road.

  “That doesn’t look good,” Cassie said, quietly, but her heart was pounding: how much wine had she consumed, and would they make her walk a line?

  Alicia looked at her. “You know anyone out that way?”

  “Sure.

  Of course she knew people out there, and in every other direction too. But Cassie wasn’t worried about them, per se. It was just a rare sight to see all those emergency vehicles, all at once.

  “Let’s follow them!” Alicia said. “I’ve never done that.”

  “What, chase an ambulance?”

  “Yeah!”

  Cassie slowed down but didn’t turn the car around. Truth be told, her guts were roiling at the idea of bodies and wreckage, even if Alicia was supposed to be a nurse. She switched the radio from pop to the local soft rock and country station and kept driving toward town.

  “Let’s see if they say anything on here.”

  Had she overshared tonight? Everyone else in her life already knew most of the things she’d told Alicia, and there was something about telling a stranger your life story to make a person feel, well, particular. Not just like everyone else in this small community. Talking to another woman, heart to heart: Cassie hadn’t really done this since her early twenties. And even if Alicia had peculiar taste and a strange parenting style, it all made the evening felt a bit less like a visit to an alien planet.

  Sure enough, after the Roto-Rooter commercial, the news said there’d been reports of a plane crash in the area, out near the old quarry.

  “Oh, my God!” Alicia said. “That’s wild! We should check it out!”

  A plane crash? Here? There were no direct flight paths overhead, that she knew of, and no runways for miles. Cassie felt a wave of weakness come over her, again imagining blood and damage.

  “It’s terrible. But no. I don’t think we should go. We’d probably just get in the way.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Alicia said, looking out into the black night. “So, what exciting location are you taking me to?”

  “Well . . . ” Cassie laughed, lightly, although she was still thinking of the crash. “I wanted to surprise you with something at the store. We’ll have the place to ourselves, and I thought I would give you a makeover, if you wanted me to.”

  “Oh, wow, Cassie,” Alicia said, slowly. “That’s very sweet of you.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. You had us for dinner, remember?”

  “Wait. You think I need a makeover?”

  “No, no,” Cassie said, but if it hadn’t been dark out, her red-hot face would have betrayed her. “I just thought it would be fun. Something to get us out of the house.”

  “And thank God for that. But then what? After you doll me up? What am I supposed to do with a gorgeous face around here?” She laughed and pushed Cassie’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re not trying to seduce me?”

  “Hehe. No, you’re safe with me.” And she was. The arousal before—now vanished—had been completely memory-based.

  Alicia was quiet for a second. “I tell you what. Let’s do it, on the condition that we go out for a drink after.”

  “I’m in,” Cassie said. “And you’re okay, you know, about not going to see the plane?”

  “What plane?” She slapped Cassie’s thigh. “It’s girl time.”

  |||||||||||||||||||||

  At Shoppers, while Cassie set up, Alicia skipped through the aisles testing lotion and perfume samples, then ripped open a bag of cheese puffs and had two of them stuck up her nose when she came back to Cassie’s station. Who was this woman?

  When they’d walked into the store, Cassie was all too aware that they were in the public eye, store lights announcing them to the dark parking lot and the road beyond. It wasn’t unusual for her to work late sometimes, but if anyone asked, she would say inventory, or emergency for her daughter. Cough syrup, or maybe something of a more delicate nature—suppositories. Yes, that would shut them up.

  Now, though, with Alicia gone feral, Cassie decided to move the whole production into the staff room and cut the front lights. Contain the potential damage.

  “There’s a radio back there,” Cassie said, to lure Alicia in. “So we can listen to the news.”

  “Why the hell would we do that?”

  She’d forgotten about the crash already?

  “Come on,” Cassie said. “I need running water.”

  Alicia grabbed a big Toblerone and followed Cassie. “I’m keeping track, you know. I’ll give you the money.”

  “Sounds good,” Cassie said. “I’ll ring it all in tomorrow.”

  In the staff room, Cassie turned the store lights back to their usual half-brightness—the company’s prescription to deter thieves—and set things up at the lunch table.

  “Come, your majesty, sit in this throne,” Cassie said.

  Alicia scowled. “I’ve had enough princess bullshit, thanks.”

  “Oops. Get your butt into my beauty machine,” she said. “Is that better?”

  She was going to start from scratch, if Alicia would let her. Do a mini facial to freshen things up before the serious application of cosmetics began. “Have you ever had a full face done?”

  “Yeah,” Alicia said. “My wedding day. I looked like a peach-faced hooker.”

  “Even in the photos? Sometimes the orange tones translate well to film.”

  “Especially in the photos. I had to get them retouched before anyone else got a look at them. That’s why you didn’t see any on the walls at home. They’re pretty gruesome.”

  Cassie had switched the radio on, but there had been no news of any airplanes found for at least three songs worth of air time. Then, once she’d begun applying Alicia’s foundation, “Stairway to Heaven” came on, and Cassie relaxed a bit. Surely the deejay would not risk an epic song like that if there was major news to pass on.

  While Cassie worked, Alicia shifted into high gear. She began to ask about every detail of Cassie’s life, like a forensic examiner eking out information. But it wasn’t like in the schooly
ard; Alicia was not making small talk. Maybe the kitchen and car revelations had made her curious, but she seemed to be grilling Cassie for evidence. She was also moving her face way too much for makeup application, but how could Cassie tell her to stop talking? This was supposed to be a girls’ night out, after all. If only she had some kind of tool to set between Alicia’s teeth, like those sharp things they shove into your mouth before a dental x-ray. A bit of pain if she dared to move or speak.

  What made you stay here? What gets you up in the morning? When your mother passes, will you leave? The litany rolled on, despite Cassie having covered most of these topics earlier. It seemed like Alicia was trying to have their move to this town make some sort of sense, when clearly, she was miserable.

  Cassie answered honestly at first but stopped by the time she got to Alicia’s eyeliner. Was it a crime if she made living in Stevens Falls sound better than it actually was? A town is a different world to every person within it—that was something she’d read recently, in a feature on Fort McMurray. Up there, it was more obvious: the newly rich, the drugged-out oil pigs, and young families with all the toys, versus the mourning environmentalists and the indigenous elders who declared the whole landscape dead.

  Still, Cassie could not lie. Instead she began to turn it around, asking Alicia what kept her here, other than Iain.

  “Nothing,” she said. “If he died or got abducted, I’d be gone.”

  “But what about Chloe?” she asked, shocked to hear this. “She’s doing okay here, isn’t she, aside from the nature fear?”

  Alicia started to say something, then bit it back.

  “What?” Cassie asked. She’d just put some colour into Alicia’s cheeks. Suddenly she was a happier-looking woman with better bone structure. Someone who would turn heads. Get a job. Relax a little.

  “Chloe’s never going to be okay, Cassie. She’s broken inside.”

  Cassie dropped the lip liner she was about to use to resurrect Alicia’s mouth. She laughed, nervously. “Aww, no, she’s a sweet girl.”

  “No, it’s true,” Alicia said, evenly. “I think she’s beyond fixing.”

  The word adopted floated to the surface of Cassie’s brain, but she didn’t ask. It was the only explanation that Cassie could think of. Alicia’s comment was cruel and dismissive even if what she said were true. Cassie didn’t know how any mother, even an adoptive one, could say such a thing. Still, it allowed her scrambling mind to move from incredulous to sympathetic, and it let Alicia—in part, at least—off the hook.

  “What . . . what’s wrong?”

  She thought, Spectrum, maybe, or some kind of mental health issue, drugs in the mother’s womb, although Chloe had never shown any indication of that on playdates.

  “She’s selfish and bossy,” Alicia said. “We’ve given her a perfect life. Right from the fucking water birth to the meditation music piped into her eco-friendly crib, and so on, blah blah blah, and she just doesn’t get it.”

  Cassie’s sympathy vanished. Not adopted. Selfish and bossy was not broken. It was the default. Didn’t this woman know anything about kids?

  Suddenly she wanted nothing to do with this makeover. She picked up the lip liner from the floor, but then, made a snap decision: she wouldn’t use it. She would leave Alicia’s mouth totally naked, a pale hole in the middle of the majesty she’d created.

  “All done,” Cassie said, just as the radio station sounded its top-of-the-hour chime. The announcer came on and read an update that sounded rushed, almost as if it had been quickly cobbled together by the news team.

  Breaking news tonight in what seems to be shaping up as a case of UFO, an as-of-yet unidentified flying object. Earlier this evening it was assumed a plane had crashed near the old quarry. However, no traces of a plane have been located, nor any reports of missing aircraft filed, despite a number of concerned citizens joining the emergency crews in the search. Yet many people swear they saw something bright moving across the sky and falling in the area just off County Road 10. Don Fallis of Fallis Shoes says it was orange, very fast, and streaked across the edge of the sky. And local astronomer Alistair Roberts believes it could have been a meteorite.

  At that point the audio cut away to a pre-recorded sound bite recorded over the phone. Roberts spoke for a couple minutes before the clip ended with…

  They’re called Earth grazers. We can begin a search when day comes. If we’re lucky, we’ll find it. Magnets will stick to rocks that come to us from space.

  The update then switched back to the announcer.

  Folks, it may be some time before we know exactly what fell to Earth. In the meantime, here’s Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 hit, “White Rabbit.”

  “Weird!” Cassie exclaimed. “A meteorite? But thank God there’s no plane down.”

  Alicia sniffed. “Typical. Small-town panic over what, a shooting star?”

  What was that in Cassie’s stomach now? Hatred? Indignation? Whatever it was, she wanted it gone.

  “How about that drink?” she asked.

  “God, yes,” Alicia said.

  Cassie swept all of the makeup into a shopping bag and hung it on the staff coat rack. Then, she took Alicia out the back door so she wouldn’t pelican away more stock in her slouchy purse. Only once they were in the car did she remember that she hadn’t shown Alicia her made-up face. Strangely, Alicia hadn’t asked to see, but now she turned Cassie’s rear-view mirror toward her. “Yowza,” she said. “Hot mama.”

  “You look great,” Cassie said, and turned the mirror back toward her before Alicia had time to notice her lips.

  |||||||||||||||||||||

  They went to Wood’s, the one place worth going to, its misplaced apostrophe yet another thing Alicia could poke fun at. Heads turned when they went in. There were a couple double takes, and Cassie had to raise her hand and smile at a few patrons. Once they were at a tall table by the window and had pints of pale ale in their hands, Alicia pulled out her phone.

  “I still don’t give a shit,” she said. “It’s just habit.”

  Cassie was glad she was checking. “No messages from the er?”

  “Nope. I’m still surprised that a backwater like this even has a hospital.”

  What an idiot! Did she expect them all to be as healthy as horses, out here in the fresh country air?

  “It serves a large area, actually,” Cassie said. “Right up to the edge of Ottawa.”

  Alicia was gulping down her beer like it was milk. A silence developed between them as they both scanned the room, looking for—what? People looking back?

  Not for Cassie. She was looking for escape. Friend, relative, customer, she didn’t care—she just wanted another person to generate a nicer conversation.

  “Cassie,” Alicia said, then tried to disguise a burp with a cough. “I have a confession to make.”

  Oh, no. Here it comes, Cassie thought. The affair. The alter ego. The drugs she took to mess Chloe up during the pregnancy.

  “Okay,” she said, forcing herself to sound calm. “What is it?”

  “We didn’t come here for Iain’s toy obsession.”

  “Oh?”

  Alicia leaned closer to Cassie, lowering her voice to a near-whisper. “It was for you. Or people like you.” She swept her hand in front of her, taking in the whole bar. “This town. This life. All of it. Iain’s writing a big story about it, and we’re supposed to pretend he isn’t.”

  Cassie recoiled from Alicia’s beery breath. What the hell?

  “A story?” She tried to smile it off. “What kind of story? A novel?”

  “Well, story isn’t really the right word. It’s more of a . . . an exposé.” She shook her head. “I just thought you should know. It was getting too hard to hold it in anymore.”

  Cassie glanced at Alicia’s mouth—her colourless, wrinkle
-collecting mouth—smiling like she’d just delivered wonderful news.

  “I see,” Cassie said. “And what has he found?”

  “He won’t tell me a thing. Of course, I give him details, but I don’t know if he uses them. All I know is that I want to go home. The gig, or the jig, whatever they say, is up. We don’t belong here, and I’ve never been good at acting.” She finished her last inch of beer. “Fuck, it feels good to finally tell you. I was starting to feel like I might burst.”

  Burst? She was going to burst? Cassie’s body suddenly felt enormous, like a huge balloon being squeezed by the hands of a giant. An aneurysm in waiting. An explosion, pending. And Alicia was watching her, expecting her to say something.

  “This is . . . well, it’s a lot to take in.” It was Cassie’s turn to guzzle her pint: the best five-point value of the day, even better than the ice cream.

  “It won’t paint you in a bad light,” Alicia said. “Or if it does, I’ll make him change it.” She leaned in close again. “But please don’t tell Iain I told you. He’ll go ballistic.”

  Cassie nodded. She had to get out of here, especially since she’d just noticed her mother’s best friend, Judith, walk in. There was no way she was going to introduce Alicia to the kindest woman in the world. The bitch would likely mock Judith’s palsied face as soon as she turned around. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. We should probably go soon, hey?”

  “So soon?”

  “It’s getting late for June,” Cassie replied. “She’ll be a bear tomorrow if we don’t get her to bed soon.” She didn’t care about bedtime: it was the weekend. She just needed to get this woman out of her sight.

  Alicia sighed, and started to put on her jacket. “Yeah, Chloe too. But don’t you just want to say screw it all? Like, what about our lives? What about what we want?”

  “I don’t mind,” Cassie said, walking toward the back door to avoid Judith. “I like being a mother.”