The Falling Sky

by Pippa Goldschmidt

  ‘You don’t understand.’ She’s trying to keep her voice down, trying to stay calm and quiet. ‘I meant what I said. This observation is just that — one observation. You can’t bring down an entire theory on the basis of a few fuzzy pixels. Especially when you don’t have anything else…’

  But he doesn’t appear to be listening. He’s leaning back against the table now, gazing at the ceiling. Water is dripping off the table and splashing onto his shoes but he doesn’t notice. ‘It’s always a failing of female scientists in the end. The lack of any sort of killer instinct. The apparent contentment to let others get the glory for their work.’ He looks quite happy about this. She glares at his horrible face and walks off.

  In the women’s toilet, her own face looks back at her out of the mirror, as if it fails to recognise her. She tries to smile and her reflection twitches like a fish hooked on a line. Failing? Is she failing? She doesn’t feel like she has any sort of choice right now. There seems to be no free will in her universe, now that she and Maggie have found these wretched galaxies. Events just happen to her.

  Outside, in the corridor, the researcher is waiting. ‘Why did you play down your results?’ she asks.

  ‘Because that’s my job,’ answers Jeanette. ‘To be realistic. Like I told you before, we just don’t know yet.’

  ‘Why did you agree to come and do the interview, then?’

  ‘Because you asked me. Because people need to understand how science works.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to work very well, does it?’ snaps the woman and she walks off, her black plastic legs creaking down the corridor.

  The tube journey back to Queen Street, with its rhythmic stops, feels as restful as a heartbeat. She wonders what will happen next with the galaxies. Down here, so far from the sky, it’s easy not to care. In fact, she’s tempted to stay in this enclosed space, insulated from everything up there on the surface.

  When she goes to the Observatory the next day she wishes she had stayed on the tube, going round and round underneath Glasgow. Because they’re waiting for her. She was never bullied at school, always felt a worm of contempt for the kids who had dog shit smeared on their books. Now she wishes she’d been more compassionate. Because they’re all waiting, all in a line, propped against the wall outside the canteen. She feels her stomach turn over. But she knows she did the right thing. What else could she have done?

  ‘We saw you on the news,’ one of them says. Turner, a post-grad in his final year, with a generally unwashed appearance and currently writing up his thesis.

  She nods to acknowledge this, and opens the door to go inside. Apart from anything else, it’s cold. The wall is the only thing between them and the hills south of Edinburgh, and at this time of year the wind skirls up the slopes before blasting people foolish enough to stop outside. She needs hot coffee. She needs peace and quiet.

  But before she can escape someone else says, ‘You shouldn’t have done it.’ The words are made physical in the cold air, little puffs of emotion.

  ‘Why not?’ She pauses, the door half open.

  ‘Because…’ Silence. They’re not good at expressing themselves, this lot. Ask them how to derive the Friedmann-Lemaitre equations, or plot data on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and they can be fluent, graceful even. Ask them if they prefer sausages to bacon, or what their hopes or fears or dreams are, and they’re silent. She can articulate it for them, but she doesn’t see why she should. She waits.

  Mark steps in. ‘The phone’s been ringing off the hook, Jeanette. None of us are getting any work done.’

  ‘Is that all? Well, I’m here now. Just put the calls through to me.’ But she knows that isn’t all. She can see Richard out of the corner of her eye, standing a few metres away on the grass. He can probably hear what they’re saying.

  Mark shakes his head, almost sorrowfully. ‘Why are you talking on the news? What do you think that will achieve?’

  ‘It’s our duty to explain, to communicate. What’s the point of doing science if you don’t tell people about it?’ But she knows this sounds pompous.

  ‘And David Grant! F’Chrissakes!’

  She winces. ‘Well, that wasn’t my idea. I didn’t even know he was going to be there until the last minute.’

  ‘You should have refused.’

  She remembers what Grant said yesterday, about female scientists being too modest and doing what they’re told.

  ‘Fuck off, Mark.’ And she goes inside to get her coffee.

  One day, when Jeanette gets home from school, there’s a large white envelope on the coffee table in the lounge, addressed to her.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Her mother seems expectant, as if she knows something Jeanette doesn’t.

  She picks the envelope up. Its whiteness and freshness seem alien in this environment. She slowly peels open one corner. There seems to be a certificate inside. Something to do with Kate’s swimming? Kate used to get stacks of certificates. But when she removes the stiff piece of paper from its envelope she notices a drawing of a five-pointed star and a crescent moon. Underneath this drawing are the words, ‘You are the proud owner of a star named…’ and then there’s a series of dashes where someone has written ‘Katherine Agnes Smith’ in red biro. Below that is a series of numbers which she recognises as stellar coordinates.

  ‘I’ve bought a star for you,’ Her mother says.

  ‘What?’ She finds it difficult to speak. She clears her throat. ‘Why?’ It comes out louder this time.

  ‘I thought you’d like it. You seem to like the stars…’ Her mother’s voice dies away. And why doesn’t she like it? In fact, she’s horrified. She fingers the piece of paper, and realises from the coordinates that the star is in the southern hemisphere. It doesn’t say how bright it is. So she won’t able to see it from here, and she may never be able to see it at all, if it’s too faint.

  ‘When you do your astronomy…’

  She looks at her mother on the sofa, wearing the same skirt that she wore yesterday and hugging a cushion, squashing it tight against her stomach.

  But she thinks about the sky, the cold, clean, hygienic starlight that she looks forward to watching each night, the light that’s uncluttered by anything in the rest of her life.

  ‘It’s nonsense,’ she bursts out.

  ‘What is?’ Her mother is still cradling the cushion, still obviously hoping that she’s done the right thing.

  ‘Buying a star. Giving it a name.’

  ‘But I paid for it. It’s entered into a catalogue.’ Her mother holds out her hand and Jeanette passes her the certificate, pleased to get rid of it.

  ‘Stars are usually only ever given numbers, depending on where they are in the sky. They’re just coordinates, like latitude and longitude.’

  ‘But I thought you said that some of them have names too.’

  Jeanette puts her head in her hands. ‘Bright stars, the ones that have been known about for ever, they have names. And if you discover something extraordinary, it may get named after you. You can’t just buy it and name it.’

  ‘But now when you look up in the sky, there’s a star named after… I thought you’d like that. To have a connection.’

  It’s too much. ‘The star’s in the wrong hemisphere! I can’t even see it from here!’ She grabs the paper out of her mother’s hand and rips it in two. ‘And I don’t want to! Why bother naming a star after her? She’s not there. She’s nowhere!’

  She’s holding a piece of jagged paper in each hand. Her mother cowers against the back of the sofa, as if the pieces of paper are dangerous.

  As she leaves the room, she can hear the click of the TV being turned on.

  Another day after school, she finds her mother lying on the sofa, her face buried in the cushions. The TV is on but the sound is turned off, and the silence in the room is like a thick shell surrounding them. Jeanette is afraid to speak in case she breaks it and something bad spills out. So she just puts her hand on her mother’s s
houlder, gently, her fingertips barely touching the smooth cotton of the blouse. But her mother twitches and leaps round, her face distorted and wet.

  Since the explosion her parents have been wearing masks, white and rigid. This is why they’re not able to speak very often, because the masks won’t let them. Only their eyes aren’t covered by the masks, but their eyes are a long way away, staring down at the world like frightened gods.

  Now her mother’s mask has gone, and her face is naked. Jeanette thinks she prefers the mask.

  One evening, picking over the remains of dinner, her mother says, ‘I went into the garden today.’

  Jeanette blinks, surprised, at her father. As if she can read their minds, her mother says, ‘Actually, I go out there regularly. It helps me think.’

  ‘What do you think about, Mum?’ Jeanette is genuinely curious.

  ‘Things. All sorts.’ She jabs her food. ‘It’s very neat isn’t it? Everything’s in its place.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says her father, but Jeanette doesn’t see why this is a compliment.

  ‘But there seem to be lots of cut stems on the rosebushes. Where do the flowers go?’

  Jeanette knows where they go. One day when she was walking home from school along the sea road, she saw a large vase of flowers in the window of the house. From the pavement she could only see vague red splodges, and she couldn’t tell what sort of flowers they were. But now she knows they were roses.

  She walked away from the house, across the road and down the beach, right to the water’s edge. The wet sand gleamed in the late afternoon sun, the tide was coming in and as she wandered along the edge of the sea, she looked over her shoulder and watched the water drown her footprints.

  ‘Jeanette,’ her father says, ‘Are you going to look at the stars tonight?’

  ‘I might do.’ It’s a clear night and she hasn’t got much homework.

  ‘How far away is the nearest star?’

  ‘You mean the Sun? Ninety-three million miles.’

  ‘And the next nearest? The first proper star. The Sun’s not really a proper star, is it?’

  She stares at him. ‘Yes it is. Of course it is. It’s just that it’s much nearer than all the others so you see it differently.’ She’s well aware that he’s deflecting attention onto her, and away from himself and the disappearing flowers. But at least for once they’re actually listening to her.

  On the phone, Jeanette’s mother says that she’s coming to visit her in Edinburgh because she ‘needs a break’. She doesn’t say what she needs a break from.

  Since Jeanette’s last visit to her parents, there has been no mention of the disappearing photo. It’s joined the list of things that aren’t talked about. When she first brought it back with her, she displayed it on her bedside cabinet. But its visibility is too disturbing. To see Kate’s face every morning compresses time and takes her back to the era of grief and silence. So she hides the photo in a drawer of scarves where it stays wrapped up in something delicate that she hardly ever wears.

  But if her mother is coming, surely they will have to talk about it. Before she goes to pick her mother up from the station, Jeanette unwraps the photo from its silky shroud and props it up against the lamp on the bedside table.

  ‘Hello, Kate.’

  Kate’s too silent, her gaze is too steady.

  The rest of the flat is silent too. Paula’s been packed off for the weekend because there’s not enough room in the flat for all three of them. At least, not if they sleep separately. She would like to be in a parallel universe where her mother sleeps on the sofa bed and she can share her double bed with Paula.

  It starts to rain on the way to the station. She wonders if her mother will mention the photo.

  Her mother kisses her cheek. They wait at the bus stop, huddled together under her umbrella, and the noise of the rain on it is like static on the radio drowning out all the words. They don’t say much. Her mother doesn’t mention the photo.

  The flat has been hastily tidied, and Paula’s things are scattered in the corner of the living room. Her clothes look as if she has only just stepped out of them and run away naked. Jeanette slips her hand into a mound of underwear, feeling the fabric slide against her fingers and imagines Paula hiding in the garden, her skin smooth against the rough bark of the trees, waiting to be found.

  She doesn’t invite her mother into the bedroom. They will have a nice afternoon first.

  ‘Where’s your flatmate?’ asks her mother.

  ‘Staying with friends.’ Her mother will have her bed and she’ll sleep on the sofa bed. That way at least she can wrap herself in Paula’s sheets, and smuggle herself into Paula’s dreams.

  She tries to see her flat through her mother’s eyes. There’s stuff everywhere; she can sense her mother itching to tidy it up and hide it all away.

  ‘What do you want…’ she pauses to sip her tea for maybe too long, ‘…to do?’

  Her mother looks around at the books, the papers, the clothes. ‘Some fresh air would be nice.’

  So they head back towards the bus stop, Arthur’s Seat behind them. Once in town, they take a meandering route through the streets.

  ‘I love glimpsing bits of the sea from up here, right in the centre of the city,’ Jeanette says and her mother nods in agreement. But Jeanette knows that the sea is problematic. The sea also means a seaside house with her father’s car parked outside, the curtains pulled tight shut so that it’s dark in the room with only a small amount of sunlight creeping along the carpet. A woman stretched out on the bed, waiting. She swallows.

  But walking around town isn’t a bad thing to do, and the silence between them is almost pleasant. When the rain starts again they have to go back home. Families, she thinks, are like black holes. They’re inescapable, because no matter how hard you try, they will suck you in.

  At home, she still doesn’t take her mother into the bedroom. Is she making her mother wait on purpose? Delaying the confrontation?

  ‘Do you want to help me cook dinner?’ she asks, and they make a curry together. She takes care to add in all the spices and flavourings her mother wouldn’t normally bother with.

  And when her mother says, between forkfuls, ‘This tastes nice,’ she’s mean enough to think of that as a victory. But there was the macaroni cheese. Perhaps that justifies it?

  Not long after Kate died, Jeanette asked her mother to cook macaroni cheese. It was Kate’s favourite meal, and they hadn’t had it since.

  ‘Why?’ Her mother looked round from where she was sitting on the sofa, watching TV.

  ‘Because.’ The TV was on too quietly, Jeanette thought. Her mother couldn’t possibly hear it properly.

  ‘But you don’t like it. You always say it’s too gloopy!’

  ‘What are you watching?’ Jeanette pointed at the screen.

  Her mother sighed. ‘I don’t know, I’m just waiting for something better.’

  When they had the macaroni cheese that night, it was as awful as ever and Jeanette wondered what Kate liked about it. She tried to swallow, but there was too much of it, lying heavy in her mouth, weighing down her tongue, like soil packed into a garden pot. Perhaps it would suffocate her.

  She pushed the remains of it around her plate with her fork, scooped it into mountains, plains, valleys, all the time wondering what to do with the stuff in her mouth.

  Her mother noticed her plate. ‘You’re too old to play with your food, Jeanette.’

  Her father looked at her properly for the first time that night. ‘You asked for it, missy. Just eat it.’

  If she swallowed it, she knew she would be sick. Finally, she opened her mouth and let it spill out, almost fascinated by the pale slime.

  ‘Jeanette!’ Her father hit the table, and the salt and pepper shakers rattled against each other, like chattering teeth. She was afraid to look at him so she stared down at the plate, at the horror.

  ‘Leave her be,’ her mother muttered.

  She was still connected
to it by a line of drool. Her mother leaned over with a napkin, and dabbed at her face.

  ‘Eat your dinner!’ her father roared again. But when she dared to look at him, she realised she was angry too.

  ‘Why! What’s going to happen if I don’t?’ And she ran out of the room, managing to knock her plate onto the floor.

  So they were all angry and there was nowhere for it to go. And now with her mother here, she’s still angry. Angry at the silence they always settle into, like train tracks leading to the same destination that they never want to visit. So she drinks a lot of wine with dinner, and talks about work. This is a safer topic.

  ‘The students have all gone nuts over my peculiar linked galaxies. They think it’s an excuse not to have to learn the usual stuff. The Big Bang theory.’

  Her mother laughs a little. ‘It always sounds odd when you say that. It’s as if it’s just normal.’

  ‘It is normal to me,’ she smiles. ‘What else would be normal if you didn’t have the Big Bang? It would just be — chaos. No structure at all.’ And she realises, maybe for the first time, that most people don’t have this structure to their lives. This cosmic scaffolding to cling onto. Perhaps that’s why they go for religion.

  ‘But doesn’t it make you feel so inconsequential? The enormity of it? The numbers with strings of zeros after them just to measure the distance to the nearest star?’

  No. No, she doesn’t really feel that. She feels like she can grasp it all in her hands when she writes down the correct equations to work out those distances. Smaller things in life are more capable of cutting her down, making her feel as small as them.

  ‘If you understand it, you don’t feel overwhelmed by it.’ She takes another gulp of wine. Her mother hasn’t drunk that much, but they seem to have got through a bottle.

  ‘If you understand it all perfectly, that means there can’t be anything else left to discover.’

  ‘No…’ She’s surprised by her mother’s grasp of the balance between what is known and what isn’t. ‘You’re right, there’s always more to find out. Anyway,’ she says, pouring another glass of wine, ‘I got a job out of it.’ And she holds the glass up to her mother, as if making a toast.