The Promise of Stardust

by Priscille Sibley

  “Yeah, but Sanders has cancer. It’s bad. I heard through the grapevine his prognosis is grim. Your friend may need another partner if Welsh wants to retire, too. You should make nice with Phil. Maybe the two of you could start your own practice.”

  I scratched my head. It was a shame about Sanders. He’d let me follow him around for a couple of days when I was still in med school. Nice guy.

  I indulged myself in a brief fantasy where I convinced Carol to live in Portland, but it was indeed a fantasy. There was no way. She’d already bought a beautiful apartment on the Upper East Side. Hell, she had a preschool picked out for our future kids.

  The farmhouse, an unpolished and aging Victorian with peeling clapboard, reflected the morning sun, and the unyielding steadiness of the place comforted me. The garden appeared recently tended. Whenever Elle came home, she took care of it as her first order of business. If she didn’t make it up from Texas, it sometimes filled with crabgrass and dandelions. Mom weeded here and there. Sometimes I even spent an hour or two yanking up roots. But it was Elle’s place, Celina’s place.

  Most of the plants were perennials. This time home, Elle must have spent hours augmenting them with annuals. New Guinea impatiens in hot pink and petunias in white tumbled over the edges. The garden looked like a fat wad of cotton candy.

  A creaking door opened across the field. “May I help you?” Elle called, sounding tentative.

  I spun toward her and waved, the pinwheel in my hand catching the summer breeze.

  Wrapped in a long moss-green cardigan that matched the color of her eyes, Elle paused for a moment. Then the surprise in her voice rose over the anxiety I’d heard moments before. “Matt? Matt, what are you doing here?” Elle crossed the field, her step springing into a gallop, until we were hugging, not as lovers but as the friends we had become over time.

  “Mom said you’d gone to Bar Harbor,” I said.

  “I was planning to, but I, well, please don’t tell her, I exaggerated how soon I was driving there. I wanted to spend last night, watching the stars—alone.”

  Elle’s cheeks and nose wore a barely sunburned glow. She shaded her eyes from the sun, which had broken through the trees to hit her face. “I didn’t know you were coming home.”

  “I wasn’t. But I had this urge to see the ocean. Carol suggested Long Island. I wanted Maine.”

  “Is she here?” Elle’s gaze shot up to the driveway and my car. “I’d love to meet her.”

  “She’s on call this weekend. I have to go back tomorrow.”

  “Oh, too bad.” She tugged on my sleeve. “Come up to the house. I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”

  I only held Celina for a few minutes, yet I’d carried her with me every day since. Pausing, I scanned for the rock-circled patch of moss and pushed the pinwheel into Celina’s marker. Elle watched with silent intensity. I shrugged, and neither of us said more about my gift.

  I’d never quite gotten over what Elle said about naming Celina, that her name would be the only thing we would ever give her. The day we buried her I felt compelled to leave some kind of token and the only thing I had in my pocket was a package of Bazooka bubble gum. I slipped it underneath the urn. Stupid, I know, juvenile even. I was a kid. Both Elle and I were. But ever since, I left a trinket here, a marble there, a wind chime, a ribbon, something. Almost fifteen years had passed and the only real thing we ever gave her was the name and even that was only etched in our memories.

  Elle didn’t say a word but scooted down and blew the wind toy, making the wheel spin around, then she placed her palm down on the pocket of moss for a moment.

  “The garden looks very pink,” I said, mustering a grin.

  She cocked her head to the side. “Something wrong with a pink garden?”

  “Suppose not.”

  Elle shook her head. “You won’t believe this. Christopher and his girlfriend came out here. He thought he was doing me a favor, dug up everything except the lilac bush and moved the garden over by the house. He said it would make the lawn easier to mow. I had to replant everything.”

  “Shit. Did he find her urn?” I asked.

  “No. The moss was undisturbed. Thank God. It would be too difficult to explain after all this time.”

  In the bright sunshine, I could read her body language. Neither embarrassment nor shame had kept her from telling her family. She still felt like it was her fault Celina died, and I wanted to tell her again that she shouldn’t blame herself. I didn’t. “Did you ever tell Adam about Celina?”

  “No. He wouldn’t understand. She didn’t belong to him.” Elle lowered her eyes. “But enough of that. Tell me your plans for today.”

  After a beat to regroup, we went inside. Not much had changed inside the kitchen. It still had one of those rounded-off Frigidaires from the fifties, as indestructible as the generation who made them.

  “You look great,” I said.

  She tousled her hair and pulled it away from her face. “If I knew I was going to see anyone, I’d have tried to make myself a bit more presentable.”

  “You look great,” I repeated.

  She leaned against the old sideboard, appraising me. “You, too.” Elle darted over to the blinking answering machine, picked up the receiver, and listened to the message.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “I keep missing Adam. We haven’t talked for a couple of days.”

  “I talked to him Thursday night.”

  “You did?

  “I was calling to talk to you.”

  “Did he sound okay?”

  “A little distracted, but that’s nothing new. He didn’t even say you were in Maine. What’s up?”

  She shrugged. “The opportunity to take a few days off came up suddenly. I left him a note saying I was going home because it was now or never before the mission chance. Anyway, I think he might be angry, but it’s hard to tell. Lately, he’s been so tied up with the safety issues on the orbiter that we barely see each other. We live together, but we only bump into each other at night.”

  That could have a couple of different meanings. As much as it bothered me to think of her with him, they did live together. Still, I didn’t say anything. I considered her my best friend. I often told her things I didn’t tell Carol, like how I had doubts about my neurosurgery residency, how I often wished I’d stuck with general surgery, how much I missed home. But our love relationships were forbidden topics.

  We took the coffee out to the gazebo and sat on the wicker rockers, looking down at the high-tidal river. We talked about her father, her brother, about New York and Houston. We laughed the way we used to, and I felt more comfortable with her than I had with anyone in a long time. There was never pretense, only acceptance.

  “You’re no longer the child prodigy. Now you’re just a smart-ass,” I said, grinning at her. “Are you feeling any trepidation over turning thirty next month?”

  She chuckled. “No, just the opposite. I finally feel—normal—like I fit in.”

  My stomach growled loud enough for Elle to hear.

  “Hungry?” she asked.

  “Lunchtime.”

  We piled into my car, initially heading somewhere for lobster rolls. When I cranked the engine, it squealed.

  “You need to tighten your belts,” she said.

  I glanced at my waistband.

  “Under the hood. The car hood,” she said. “How could you grow up with Mike and never learn the most basic things about engines?”

  She was right to some degree. My brother loved cars as much as I avoided them. “I hung out with you,” I said as we pulled onto the road.

  “Oh no, you can’t get away with that. I watched Mike every time he was fixing something. I know basic auto mechanics.”

  “You know quantum mechanics.”

  “They’re not quite the same thing.” She grinned.

  “Yes, Einstein, I know.” I was trying to draw attention away from the fact that the only thing I could do with a car was pump
gas into its tank. “I fix brains.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Big brain surgeon. It helps to know how to fix a flat. I paid attention, and it’s pretty useful now. When part of the Space Shuttle breaks loose, you sort of have to know what to do. Damned heat tiles.”

  “You knew some of the Columbia astronauts, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.” She stared out the passenger-side window.

  “Are they training you how to fix the tiles if they come loose again?”

  She turned away from the window to look at me. “They train us for every contingency. I think it’s their favorite word. Don’t worry. You’re like an old woman sometimes. At least, if you die on a mission, you die fast.”

  “That’s comforting.” I refused to conceal my sarcasm.

  “Listen, today I don’t want to worry about what is going to happen up there. For the next ten months I can do that. Every day. How to do this maneuver, how to do that one.”

  “You never told me how the Vomit Comet ride went,” I said, trying to break the tension.

  She chuckled. “You’d lose your cookies.”

  “And you think this, why?”

  “Remember the roller coaster at Funtown? You were greener than the Hulk when we got off.”

  “No.” I denied it to salve my macho ego.

  “Yes. Like a lizard.”

  “No.” I denied it to save face.

  “Like a lawn on the PGA tour.”

  “No.” I denied it because she was on a roll.

  “Want to go to Funtown right now, get on a coaster, and redeem yourself?”

  No, but we did. We took Route 1 to Saco. Funtown was like a microversion of Great Adventure, but it had a roller coaster, an old wooden one for the purist.

  Forty minutes and the cost of admission later, Elle was rubbing her hands together like the villain in a silent movie. “Choose wisely, my victim. It may be your last ride.”

  I pointed to Excalibur, the wooden roller coaster. I needed to, in Elle’s words, redeem myself.

  Elle practically danced backward, luring me onward with her finger coiled and her smile nearly as big as the dip in the rail. The clickety-clack of the cars going over the tracks could unnerve Rambo, but when we reached the line, she said, “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

  “Methinks thou art trying to get thyself off the hook by making it sound like this young page wants to chickenshit out.”

  “Ha!” She crossed her arms.

  “It’s all right,” I said, rubbing her neck. “If you want to surrender and admit that roller coasters don’t scare me, I won’t make you go on,” I said, hoisting up my bravado in the hope she’d leave my ego intact.

  “Yeah, yeah. That will be the day.”

  After ten minutes in line we climbed into the first car on the tram. I started to sweat, not because I was nervous, but because I felt strangely cold, as if my body was having a paradoxical reaction to the blazing sun.

  “Matt, seriously, we don’t have to do this,” Elle said, her eyes glimmering. “You look um, green.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  The chain clicked and began to pull us along the upward slope. I was going to die for my pride. Elle was sitting beside me, and she took my hand. We reached the top, and Elle cawed, “Woo-hoo!”

  “Yeah!” I yelped back. Surely, she didn’t notice my voice cracking like an adolescent boy. If I’d had the brains to go on a steel roller coaster, it might not have been so bad, but as we cornered and swung up and down along the creaking structure—I swear I could see wood rot on every railing—it took everything I had to hold the guttural death cry inside my chest.

  As we pulled to a stop and the attendant opened our car’s door, Elle let go of my hand. She stood with grace and smiled over her shoulder. “I offer my sincere apologies. You’re fine, not green at all.”

  “Then how come my legs won’t support me?”

  She smiled brightly. “Why, Dr. Beaulieu, you must have suffered a spinal-cord injury. I just happen to know a brilliant young neurosurgeon. Would you like his number?”

  “Funny,” I said, rising on my wobbly legs that felt like disconnected stilts.

  We were walking the length of Pine Point, a wide beach with soft, powder-white sand and icy water with our pant cuffs rolled high, our feet bare, testing the flat hem of the waves. We laughed, we bantered, and we commiserated about how complicated our professional lives made our personal ones.

  About a mile down the beach, she dropped on the sand and sat cross-legged. “I haven’t been here in years, not since that day.”

  “Which day?”

  Sadness slipped over her face. “When we found out I was pregnant.”

  I sat beside her, scanning the beach and remembering.

  She scooped up a handful of sand and let it run through her fingers like an hourglass while she studied me. “I’m so homesick.”

  “Mom said that, but I thought it was wishful thinking on her part.”

  “No. Homesick. Knowing Gramps’s house is still up here waiting for me is pretty seductive when it’s a hundred and ten degrees with a hundred percent humidity in Houston.” She grabbed more sand and let it fall through her lightly clenched fist. “Can I change the subject and be morbid for a minute?”

  “Okay.”

  “I made a will, in case something goes wrong on the mission,” she said.

  “You are not going to die.”

  “It’s unlikely, but the risks are high, and everyone accepts them as part of the bargain. I won’t belabor this, but there was something I didn’t want to put in the will—in case my dad reads it. He never knew about Celina. If something happens, would you see to it that her ashes are buried with whatever remains of mine are found?”

  My mouth gaped, and while I regained my composure, she continued speaking. “The house would go to Christopher, and neither he nor my father would understand if they found the urn by accident.”

  I felt sick but muttered, “Jesus.”

  “You wouldn’t have to tell Carol. You and your mom could take care of it quietly.”

  “Why my mother?”

  “I named her as executrix.”

  “You didn’t name Adam?”

  “No.” She paused for a moment. “No. I figured I’d need an executor who at least knew about the baby, and I’d rather not leave any posthumous surprises. This is a little neurotic, maudlin even, but I need to have her buried with me.”

  “Stop talking like you’re going to die.” I stood and marched down to the water, my mind replaying the video footage of Challenger blowing up, drifting, and falling into the sea.

  A couple of minutes later she arrived at my side and took my hand. “Just promise me, you’d take care of her.”

  Elle was acting like this was a shared custody arrangement. In all these years we’d barely talked about Celina, and now this. “I will ask one thing in return,” I said.

  She nodded. “Anything.”

  “Don’t die.”

  She looped her arm through mine. “If I live up to my end of the bargain, you won’t have to live up to yours, and strangely, I can deal with that.”

  “Elle, I mean it. Don’t go.”

  “I have to. I want to. I’m so happy I can barely stand it. And I fully intend to come back—alive. But if it goes wrong …” For the briefest moment Elle rested her forehead on my chest. “Celina was a real person to me; I don’t want to leave her there in an unmarked grave. I asked your mom, but she dismissed me, like talking about Celina all these years later was an emotional indulgence. And maybe it is. But I need this one thing. Will you do it for me?”

  I swallowed the acid in my throat. “Okay.”

  She exhaled. “Thank you. We don’t have to be morbid anymore. I’m prepared now, and if you’re prepared, the evil spirits don’t dare land on you.” She let go of my arm. “Now, I’ll race you back to the car.” She took off down the beach.

  I watched for a second or two, waiting for my soul to catch
up with hers. I was powerless to stop her, but I could try to follow her example. “Hey, no fair, Peep!”

  We weren’t supposed to kiss good night, but we did. There’s something about first love. There’s something about loving a woman that never goes away. There’s something about night skies and shooting stars and the way Elle beamed every time she looked up at them.

  Did it start as a peck on the cheek, innocently, inadvertently, softly? Perhaps. I don’t know if she kissed me or if I kissed her, but it happened down by the riverbank in the light of stars from a million aeons past. Before I cognitively grasped what we were doing, need took over. I wanted to climb inside her skin. I wanted to steal her up to the widow’s walk and make love to her like the first time.

  I wanted to make the fifteen rotten lonely years in between then and now disappear like rain into the sand on a beach. I wanted to start where we belonged. Together.

  Her voice was husky when she said my name. “Matt.”

  I was kissing her neck, pulling down the shoulder of her T-shirt, trying to get closer.

  “Matt, wait.” Just those few inches she stepped back were like a slap across my face, shoving me into the reality of a world where I was engaged to Carol, and Elle was living with Adam.

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  “Right. Oh, shit,” she murmured. “What are we doing?”

  We were loving each other the way we were supposed to. “Give me a minute so I can come up with a good answer, maybe one that can bulldoze away all the reasons we shouldn’t be doing this,” I said.

  “Please come up with a very good answer; one which will appease my guilty conscience,” she said. “God. You’re engaged, Matt! And I’m with Adam.”

  “Well, he’s a prick,” I said. “But yeah, Carol.” She didn’t deserve this.

  “I thought you liked him,” Elle said.

  “About as much as Hitler. Are you kidding me? I hate him.” I started pacing, something which is not easy to do on the slope of an uneven hill. It was hard to get a rhythm there. I needed a minute or two. Shit. Carol was back in New York. Carol, who probably stayed up most of the previous night and all of this day taking care of sick kids. And I was up here, trying to get Elle into bed, trying to justify my actions. Did Elle ask me to come up with a good reason? How about I still loved her? God, I still loved her.