The Promise of Stardust

by Priscille Sibley

  The bartender, a redheaded girl, slicked-back punk and perky, stood in front of me and smiled as if by showing me enough dazzling teeth, I’d hand over a hundred-dollar tip. “What can I get you?”

  “Corona, if you’ve got lime,” I said, turning my attention to Hank. “Thought you were a beer guy.”

  “Only thing Alice let me keep in the house back then. She figured I’d get drunk slower on beer. She wasn’t so bright in that regard. ‘Naive,’ maybe, is a better term. Alice was always an innocent.” He bottomed up his glass, set it down hard, and nodded at the bartender for another.

  She set down my beer. “Wait, haven’t I seen you on TV, the astronaut’s husband?”

  “Pretend you didn’t see us here, okay?” I said, setting down a twenty.

  She slipped the tip in her pocket and stepped away.

  I turned back to Hank. “You don’t seem drunk.”

  “I can drink a hell of a lot before I seem drunk. Besides, this is soda.”

  I reached in front of him and pulled the tumbler filled with Scotch on semimelted rocks.

  “All the others are plain Pepsi. The temptation is always there, real or imagined. Sometimes it’s easier to look your enemy in the face.” He turned as if to study me.

  “First off, Elle never had an abortion. Second, I was going to tell you about the first pregnancy. I meant to. Because … I’m going to talk about it when I testify. But the short version is we were kids in love and stupid. And things were bad with Alice.”

  Hank nodded, picked up a stirrer, and then pushed away the Scotch. “I need to refresh this one. Take it and bring a fresh Scotch. On the rocks, please. I hate diluted Scotch.”

  The bartender glanced at me and then went about her assigned task.

  “You know, I never even suspected you and she were … intimate … back then. Jesus, she was a baby.”

  “We were two teenagers, and a whole lot of horrible things were going on around us. We got swept up in the one good thing we had: each other. And she didn’t want anyone to know because she didn’t want to add to the trouble. Then she miscarried. Elle didn’t abort. Chris got that part wrong.”

  “You were going to keep the baby?”

  “I don’t know. We talked about adoption, but I honestly don’t know.”

  He bit his cheek. “And I was too drunk to even notice what was going on in my own house. Jesus. She was fifteen. You had sex with my daughter when she was fifteen. You should have known better. You were older.”

  “Yeah, but not that much. I was a kid, too. I’d be appalled if my fifteen-year-old daughter was having sex—especially after what happened to us—but when you’re the teenager with your girlfriend, that’s not what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you want her. And I did love her. I still love her. We messed up. She got pregnant. And then she wasn’t.”

  He stared at me long and hard. “I thought Elle was a good girl. Sweet, you know.”

  “She was.”

  “Did Alice know?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The bartender placed the drink in front of Hank, smiled at me, and then backed off again.

  He sniffed it, and set it back down. “And I was too drunk for Elle to talk to me. You’re right. I was a lousy father.”

  “No.” I clapped Hank on his shoulder. “But for a while there you were a lousy drunk.” I took a long swig of my beer. Getting sloshed would be stupid, although it was a damned tempting idea. To get lost. To forget. If just for a few hours. But I had plenty of problems already. I pulled out my wallet, took enough to cover his tab and mine, a little more to buy silence from the redhead, and slapped it on the bar. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Maybe Linney and Christopher are right,” Hank said. “Maybe we should let Elle go.”

  Death comes with simple surrender, a word that allows the last breath to slip away. I stared at the black oak floor as if it were an abyss.

  I could let go. I could let Elle go. I could let her be at peace. She didn’t want to live this way. And then I could lie down and die—whatever that took, pills, a gun, stepping in front of a train. Our families could bury us together. And even if there was no heaven and no hell, there wouldn’t be this agony of missing her. God. How could a benevolent God allow this to happen to my beautiful wife?

  It had only been three weeks. I could never survive three months or three years. I couldn’t survive without her in the world. I couldn’t.

  But there was a baby at stake. Elle’s baby. Part of her could still live, and what did she say that afternoon? Life is about taking risks. And the baby was still alive.

  “No,” I said to Hank. “I can’t let her go.”

  “Have you seen what it’s doing to your family? That’s what I have been sitting here thinking, not about Elle losing her virginity. Not about you taking advantage of her. We all thought you’d end up together. Me, Alice, your mom and dad. Not that that made it right, but we all figured someday … Besides, it’s moot at this point, but … but, Matt, you’re screwing this up the same way I did.”

  My head snapped toward him. “I’m not a drunk.”

  “I guess I deserve that, but it’s not what I meant.” Hank sighed. “Chris might be right. He begged me to talk you into discontinuing Elle’s life support. Linney is a wreck. And if they’re right, that there is no hope, maybe we should let Elle go.”

  “I am letting Elle go. I’m grieving, but I’m letting her go. There’s no way in hell I can let the baby go. Not now. The baby has a chance. That’s the only thing I can do for Elle. I owe her that. I owe her this baby. And no one, not you, not Christopher, not my mother or anyone else matters. If I lose everything else, if the baby lives, then …” I was going to say it would be all right, but I couldn’t say all right. Instead I finished by saying, “I owe Elle and the baby everything. They are my family.” Oddly, I realized after I’d phrased it that way, that the baby was my child, too. Not just Elle’s. And I wanted it to live.

  In pounding silence, Hank studied his shoes. I don’t know what I expected him to say. I nodded, turned, and walked toward the door. Hank had done some bad things over the years, yet in some ways, I respected him deeply. Maybe because he struggled. Maybe because, though flawed, he loved his wife and his kids. After he sobered up, he’d been there for me, too, helped pay for my medical education, and made a point to keep in touch after my own father died.

  I reached for the doorknob and realized Hank was at my side. “You’re not alone, son. We are family. And I owe Elle, too. Let’s head back to the hospital.”

  After I’d been away from Elle’s hospital room for nine straight hours, the reality of her condition hit me hard, and my legs shook.

  Hank pulled up a chair behind me. “Go ahead, Matt. Sit.”

  I did. How the hell was I going to fix this situation? I couldn’t fix Elle no matter how hard I tried to figure out a way. And kidnapping her and taking her somewhere safe until after the baby was born didn’t seem like an option.

  Hank’s voice snapped me back. “It’s like looking at Alice,” he said.

  I nodded. I’d been trying not to see Alice lying in the living room of the McClure house, but I wasn’t blind.

  “Right now you’re probably feeling like you don’t want to survive this.”

  I looked up at Hank.

  “Well, that’s how I felt when my wife was sick. I’m not saying this is ever going to get easy. I loved Alice”—he paused and swallowed hard—“every bit as much as you love my daughter. Every bit as much as I love my daughter. It took me a while to figure it out, but she’s still …” He patted his heart. “Go home and sleep tonight, Matt. I’ll be here. I’ll stay with my little girl.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been gone all day because of the trial.”

  “And chasing me down, but, son, you need to sleep or you’ll break.”

  36

  Day 21

  I drove for an hour, out around Back Bay, up along the Eastern Prom, taking time t
o look out over Casco Bay and to clear my head, and then I headed north to my house, where Jake and I planned to meet. As I approached the usually deserted road, I spotted more than a dozen cars and minivans parked along the side. Faces stared through my windshield at me. Some of the people held crosses, and others held signs of support. A local NBC affiliate news crew aimed their cameras at me. Yep, there was the blond newswoman. I gritted my teeth and avoided eye contact. Do not make a scene. I pulled down our winding driveway and parked in the barn.

  When I came out, Jake was plodding down the slope with a soft-sided blue cooler slung over one shoulder and extending his other hand to me. He rolled his eyes. “It seemed like a good idea to meet here, but the media is all over the place. Let me handle them, though. Don’t give them a statement again.”

  I shook my head. “Shit, no. I don’t want to talk to them. Particularly not to that crazy witch.”

  “Remember what I said about watching your mouth. I want you to look like a choirboy, especially after you snapped at that reporter in the men’s room. You’re starting to look like a hothead.”

  “I could have said ‘bitch.’ ”

  “Not funny. I’m serious. The last thing you need is to come off as a misogynist right now.”

  Although I didn’t appreciate being told to behave myself, I yanked open the back door and held it wide for him. “At least the property is big enough that they can’t see the house from the road.”

  He preceded me into the kitchen and then the living room, where I dropped the duffel bag with Elle’s letters and diaries on the coffee table.

  “The oversize property is the only good thing about living out in the boonies,” he said, opening the cooler. He pulled out two foil-covered sandwich-size blocks and a Caesar salad. “No one makes paninis like Yvette. Turkey artichoke.” He turned on the oven and threw them on the top rack. “So update me. You said your father-in-law is sober when you called me to come out. Have you heard any more about the Pro-Lifers hassling your mother?”

  “Some little stuff at the hospital.”

  A blank expression fell over his face and I supplied the details. “Seems some people don’t want her to be their nurse. I can’t say that I blame them right now.”

  He nodded. “That’s too bad. I used to like your mother. I think I liked the care packages she sent you at college even more than you did. Does she still make those butterscotch cookies?”

  I shrugged. “Doubt she’d bake you a batch right now.”

  “True. No matter. Yvette sent blueberry tarts. Just you wait.” He pulled out glazed tarts that looked like they belonged on the cover of a gourmet magazine, and they smelled even better.

  Everyone wanted to feed me, but I’d lost my appetite when Elle fell, and even incredible food couldn’t resurrect it. We sat down at the table and I ate a little anyhow.

  Jake twisted his neck from side to side making it pop like a chiropractor had just cracked it. “When I said it might get ugly, I didn’t expect this already, but it might get worse. I hope not.” He gestured toward the duffel. “Now, down to business. This is actually very simple; you hand me a stack of letters or diaries, and I read them. No associates, just one of your oldest friends, trying to save your unborn child.” Jake reached for one of the journals, and I almost felt sick to my stomach, like there was a Peeping Tom watching Elle through an open bedroom window.

  “Simpler still,” I said. “I’ll read them. Meanwhile, you go through the video.”

  “Video?”

  “DVD. Our wedding. You said you wanted to see any video of Elle, to see if there was anywhere she talked about family. I think there might be some from her niece’s Baptism, too, but Christopher would have that.” I dumped a carton of Elle’s books and notebooks in front of Jake. “And these are what Keisha found in Elle’s office. She has notes embedded in the margins. Maybe there’s something where Elle weighed in on abortion. I’ll invest my time in her letters.”

  “You could trust me to be respectful of her privacy.” He pulled out his glasses and sat down in the wing-backed chair.

  I nodded once. “It’s not a matter of trust, Jake. She didn’t write the letters ever expecting anyone to read them.”

  By the time he’d gone through Elle’s college notes, he found one or two notations that he thought he could use. While he watched our wedding video, I left the room. I figured I’d look at it later, preferably alone.

  Elle wasn’t much for public displays of affection, but on that day we did kiss to glass clanking. Both of us teared up during our vows. It was nothing unusual, nothing which proved anything other than we were in love.

  I sat on a wicker rocker on the front porch and flipped on the light to read one of her entries. She opened it by writing about NASA and some new anti-micrometeor technology they were developing. But a few paragraphs in, I started paying attention.

  Woo … there I go again, getting dizzy.

  Elle’s handwriting thinned out.

  There, better now. I should tell you tonight. I’m a little worried about how you’re going to react. You’ll probably go into doctor overdrive, but it will be fine. I hope it will be fine. I don’t want to lose another baby. It’s happened so many times I feel like a murderer, like it’s my fault. And it is—at least medically. But if I can bring this one into the world, maybe I can forgive myself for failing our others.

  She dated it the day she told me she was pregnant with Dylan.

  I stepped off the porch and walked through the darkness to the garden Elle planted after Celina died. For a week that spring we drove from nursery to nursery, finding the plants she wanted for the flower bed. In the years between, the lilac bush we planted had grown huge. The tulips and crocuses burst up out of the ground every spring. Irises. Peonies. Daisies and black-eyed Susans. Echinacea. Sedum. Mums. We buried Dylan’s ashes there, too. Elle sublimated her grief by pouring her love into this garden.

  I crumbled beside it and wept for the family we should have had.

  The screen door creaked open. “Matt?” Jake called from the front porch.

  In darkness, he couldn’t see me. I cleared my throat. “Yeah?”

  “What are you doing out there? You’re not talking to a reporter.”

  “No.” I pulled up my T-shirt and wiped off my face, then climbed back to the porch.

  Jake dropped into the wicker rocker when I reached the steps. “You okay?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “The wedding video has something we can use.”

  “What?”

  “It’s nothing earthshaking, but I’d like the judge to see her talking, to see her as a real live woman with dreams and hopes.” He paused. “When I married my wife, my mother-in-law staged a big production, doves, a horse-drawn carriage, about a thousand people.”

  “I remember,” I said. Jake and Yvette married straight out of college—before he even went to law school.

  “Your wedding was very simple,” he said, “but it had something, I don’t know, sincere. It was the real deal, you and her.”

  “Yeah. We love each other. I’ve had other relationships. Good ones even, but when Elle and I were apart, during the years our relationship was platonic, she was always the one. I know that sounds sappy.”

  Jake didn’t say anything for a minute. “It doesn’t. Look at Vette and me. We’ve been married for fifteen years now. We have a daughter. It’s the best part of life.”

  “You two were young,” I said, suppressing my envy of his healthy family.

  He smiled. “Obscenely young. And not prepared, but once Janey was born, we were determined to make it work. And”—he knocked the arm of the rocking chair—“so far so good.”

  “How old is Janey now?”

  “Almost thirteen.” He pulled a picture of his daughter from his wallet and passed it to me.

  The girl stood on a balance beam with the pointed toe and arched back of a gymnast.

  “Lucky for her she looks more like Yvette,” I said.

>   Jake bellowed a hearty chuckle. “Yeah. Very lucky. She’s a good kid,” he said as I passed the photo back to him. “And hopefully yours will look like Elle.”

  Jake’s words kicked me back to the reality of the moment. “Yeah, like Elle,” I said. Or like me. It didn’t matter a bit as long as the baby was healthy. How many times do people say those words with no real grasp of how very precarious life is? But I hoped that someday I’d be the proud father showing off our kid’s picture.

  Jake must have realized the implication of his words because he didn’t say anything else for a while, and I returned to reading Elle’s journal, getting lost in her voice again, until finally he asked, “How many more of those diaries do you have?”

  I shrugged. “She was prolific, chronicled everything from her time at NASA to the day she got a bad perm. I’m skimming most parts.”

  “Did you ever think she kept track of everything because she was planning to write a memoir? The Adventures of an Astronaut Heroine?”

  “You don’t get it. She wrote because she was private. These were her innermost thoughts. These are things she chose not to share. I knew most of this, but not every little nuance. Her mind could orbit around a situation and … I’m skimming most parts.”

  “Let me skim with you.”

  “You can see this one.” I passed him the one passage about how delivering Dylan would have helped her forgive herself. “Can you use it? I’ll make a copy of the page.”

  He scanned it. “Yeah. This is good. I need more like this. Let’s refine your search. Home in on the times when life threw her curveballs—her mother’s death, her previous pregnancies.”

  “I did. She didn’t write then. I organized them, chronologically. Nothing for months after her mother died. Nothing from after Dylan’s death either.” I rubbed my eyes with my palms.

  “Her first pregnancy?”

  “Only the beginning of it. She was still writing letters back then.”

  “Well, that’s when she would have decided on whether or not to abort.”