Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets

by Jessica Fox

  “Hello? Jessica?” My father was shocked. My mind raced. He would be wondering why I was calling from my American phone.

  “Uh yeah, hi, Dad. Surprise, I’m in Boston.”

  “You’re home? Are you okay?”

  My grief was so thick I could hardly speak. “Yeah, I’m home. I thought I’d come, you know, for an early visit.” My voice sounded flat and distant. I tried to inject some energy into it. “I thought it would be fun as a surprise.”

  “It’s a wonderful surprise.” My father’s concern was obvious. “Do you need me to pick you up at the airport?”

  I couldn’t speak any longer, it required too much energy. “No, I’m on my way, in a cab. I’ll see you soon.”

  “All right. I’m so happy you’re home.”

  The cab easily slipped into the darkness of another tunnel. Home. Boston was not my home. I did not want this to feel anything like home. My home was halfway around the world, with Euan. I wanted to call him. It would be so easy to type in his number, to hear his voice. We had made a deal, though: no speaking until he appeared at my doorstep. There was wisdom in having space, taking some time apart. I looked down at the phone, which sat in my hands like a loaded gun. I wanted to hear him, to feel close to him. The silence of his absent presence was overwhelming.

  I quickly tucked the phone into my pocket. We had made a promise. I wouldn’t be the one to break it.

  *

  I woke up just as we turned on to Massachusetts Avenue, a couple of blocks from my childhood home. I had travelled those roads over and over again as a sleepy child in the back seat of my parents’ car. Bodies can develop an internal knowing, like a GPS. The twists and turns must have signalled that we were close, and I woke instinctively.

  Turning onto our small street, I pointed to a classic yellow colonial house on a hill, with large maple trees in front.

  “It’s here, right here. Thank you.”

  My parents were waiting for me on the steps. When they saw me emerge from the taxi, they acted heroically calm as if my arrival was planned, greeting me warmly and helping me with my luggage. Walking up the steps, they asked no questions. Their excited conversation was filled only with “We’re so glad to see you!”, “What a treat to have you home” and “Are you hungry?”

  How could they be so good? I marvelled at their consideration, or perhaps their self-control. If it were me, and I were my child, I would have been brimming over with investigative questions, and not resting easy until I had put the pieces of the mystery together. Perhaps it was obvious to them why I was home. On catching a glimpse of myself in the downstairs hall mirror, it occurred to me that you did not have to be Sherlock Holmes to guess what had motivated my sudden return. I looked a mess and my eyes were bloodshot from crying.

  With excuses of being exhausted, I slipped upstairs. In my parents’ house I knew every floorboard, every crack and every inch of every wall. The familiarity was nauseating. At the top of the stairs, I turned to face my old room. It was the room I had grown up in, down the hall from my sister, still with “Jessica’s Parking, All Others Will be Towed” taped to the door.

  Inside my small bedroom, I faced a jungle of childhood relics, carefully preserved: bedding, books and keepsakes right where I had left them. A large Kate Winslet Holy Smoke poster was pinned to one wall, across from an etching I had picked up when I had travelled to Paris.

  I sat on the bed, listening to the sounds of my parents talking in the kitchen below. My heart began to race. I felt as if the walls were as thin as paper. There was nowhere for me to go now, no anonymity, no privacy. I had entered a time warp, and felt suddenly drastically infantilised, thinking of the contrast to the freedom I had had, living in another country, in an adult house with my boyfriend.

  My phone buzzed. I had a message. My heart flew into my throat. It was from Euan, I just knew it. He would have wanted to check in, to see if I had landed okay. That was allowed after all, wasn’t it? I quickly pulled the phone from my pocket. My heart dropped back into my chest. It wasn’t Euan, but my sister. The message read “Happy you’re home”.

  I opened my bag and took out the iPod nano that Euan had given me. Shoving the earphones into my ears and turning the volume up till the music blocked any noise, I moved the stuffed toys off the bed and climbed under the covers. I wanted to disappear, sink into the bed and never emerge again. My eyes closed to the soundtrack of Wigtown and somewhere between thoughts of Euan and Galloway, I fell asleep.

  Chapter 41

  “That great mystery of Time, were there no other; the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not…” – Thomas Carlyle, ON HEROES AND HERO WORSHIP AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY: Scottish Room, third bookshelf on the left.

  I woke to find Herman Melville sitting at the foot of my bed. He slipped off his hat and surveyed the room, looking as disgusted as I felt. Tucked under a bushy brow, his eyes were full of question marks as he wondered where the Under Milk Wood surroundings of Wigtown had gone.

  “You have to get up,” he said in an impatient tone. His breath smelled salty, like the sea.

  I rolled over and hid my face. The afternoon light poured in between the cracks in the curtain. “For what?”

  “To create.” Herman looked pleased with himself. I didn’t move.

  A week had passed and I had barely surfaced for air. Any time I had felt the desire to get up, to leave the room, I thought about the expanse of ocean between myself and Galloway and my energy would quickly drain. Thinking of anything, actually, drained me of energy because it ultimately brought me back to the truth of my circumstances: I wasn’t in Wigtown. The pain of not being able to control the next events in my life, where I was going to be, whom I was going to be with, had short-circuited my brain. All I could do was go to sleep to reboot the system.

  Herman stood up, annoyed. “It smells worse than Queequeg in here. Get up and greet your destiny.” He was losing patience and poked me with the end of his walking stick. “Anyway, you have to get up to answer your phone.”

  Slowly I realised there was a humming noise and I craned my neck to see my cell phone buzzing on the floor. I stretched my arm over to reach it. True to his word, Euan had never called. We hadn’t spoken since I got home and my heart had now stopped jumping at every phone call, thinking it might be him.

  I flipped open the phone.

  “Hello?” My voice sounded rough and tired.

  “Where are you, are you okay?” A deep male voice with a thick Boston accent greeted me on the other end. “We’ve been waiting like an hour for you. Did you forget?”

  My eyes strained to see the big radio clock, a gift I had received for my bat-mitzvah, sitting covered in dust on the table next to the bed. It was 2:30pm. I was an hour late for my production meeting.

  *

  My silver Toyota with the NASA sticker on the back pulled into the parking lot of a converted mill building outside Boston. Inside, the car still smelled like California, a mixture of coconut and sunscreen. I hazily remembered enjoying the newness of Los Angeles, and the joy of a new dream job, my own apartment and spreading my wings.

  Dragging myself up a large stairwell in the main building, I kept my sunglasses on and sipped on my iced tea. That’s one thing Wigtown could not offer, iced tea. I had no idea why the British, who loved their tea, never innovated for summertime. When one of Euan’s friends had told me it was sacrilege, I pointed out that there was Winter and Summer Pimms. Why not tea?

  I enjoyed the tea’s bitterness as it slid, cold and fresh, down my throat. Perhaps today would invigorate my spirit. I was in a thriving artists’ loft community, walking by sculptures, pictures and paint-adorned walls. I tried to soak in the creative energy on my way down the hall. I was nervous to direct again. My artistic voice felt rusty, lost and unpractised after months without use.


  I could hear voices and banging. As I walked over to the familiar studio door at the end of the hall, Will, a dear friend and an enormous talent, whom I had been lucky enough to rope into animating this film, opened the door.

  “You made it.” He slapped me affectionately on the arm. “Good to see you, Fox.”

  *

  As the animation finished, Will looked from the computer to me, expectantly.

  “It’s really brilliant. I love it,” I said, almost dropping my iced tea. Will had taken my ideas to the next level, bringing to life each film cell with a sensitive, unique touch that exceeded my expectations. It was beautiful, and I was convinced even my producer would have nothing but compliments when he saw it.

  “Do you really like it? I was worried.” Will sat back and scanned my face.

  “The story is okay,” I teased, “but your animation is brilliant. Honestly.” Though I meant every word, my energy felt low, non-existent. In the past I would have been elated, as if high. Where my insides would have been bursting with exuberance now I felt only a small tremor of pleasure. Why could I not get motivated? This was my dream, after all, to make films. And here I was doing it – I should feel infinitely lucky. Self-pitying tears sprang to my eyes. I felt empty.

  “This project is as much yours now as it is mine,” I said and slipped my sunglasses on. “I couldn’t be happier.” I was happy with the animation, just not with myself.

  “Well, good, I’m glad.” Will rubbed his hands together. “No one else is doing this kind of animation. We’re breaking new ground here.” He handed me a script. “Let’s get cracking. So how long do we have you here for anyway?”

  “I think I’m back here for good,” I said, not looking up.

  Will paused. He softly placed a hand on my shoulder while we waited for the computer to render a new scene.

  *

  Days turned into weeks, and I began to have a routine that resembled a young professional zombie’s: sleep, sleep, work. Sleep, sleep, reluctantly get out of bed to see friends. Sleep, sleep, avoid parents. Refuse to eat. Sleep.

  I was creating, as Melville had put it, but I needed an epidural. Every morning I watched myself arrive at the studios in a cloud of reluctance and tried in the old way to make art again. It was not working. I questioned all my decisions, I felt no passion, no thrill shot through my fingers and my connection to the piece was lost. In fact, my desire to make, to affect anything in the world around me, had disappeared.

  As the inner world holds a mirror to the outer one, my family watched as I quite literally started to disappear before them. Food had lost its appeal, and I dropped half my weight, my body reflecting the ghostly passivity of my waning spirit.

  Being with friends was even more difficult. Time had past since I had left, and like the protagonist in Flight of the Navigator, I had returned from what felt like a blink in Scotland to find that their lives had moved on, and they were busy with jobs and relationships. At dinner parties I sat, the single one surrounded by young couples, with a polite smile plastered on my face, while they talked about movies I hadn’t seen, politics I hadn’t followed and their achievements, which seemed so much more advanced than my own. My friends suddenly had their own apartments, they had pension schemes, health insurance and glittering futures in med school, business school or their careers, while I was living in my parents’ house, penniless, with no future to speak of.

  “So what do you do, Jessica?” a good-looking Indian medical student asked me, as we sat in Cole’s apartment. I looked at Cole pleadingly.

  “Jessica,” Cole said, “is a director who was just living in Scotland, but came back to Boston to make a film. She’s far more interesting than the rest of us.” Cole was such a good friend, making my journey home sound triumphant. The way he saw me was so much more complimentary than the way I saw myself.

  “I love Scotland,” the young medical student said.

  “She’ll also be winning an Oscar some time soon,” Cole added. His blind faith in me filled my heart.

  Cole and his girlfriend had been letting me sleep on their couch, an imposition in their small apartment, to give me a break from my family – or more likely, my family a break from me. Not once had either of them made me feel less than at home.

  Later that evening, as I was about to leave, Cole stopped me. “Stay, please. Stay as long as you need.” I looked over Cole’s shoulder to see his girlfriend setting up the couch for me. I felt like their adopted child. I needed to give them some space. I’d find somewhere else.

  His girlfriend came over and smiled warmly, leaning against Cole. They were a beautiful, peaceful couple, perfectly matched: a unit, together. It made me hyperaware of the airy, cold spaces on either side of me, single and alone.

  “Things will get better, I promise. He’s an idiot if he doesn’t come,” Cole’s girlfriend said, hugging me.

  I nodded, with no hope that in three days my ginger-haired knight was going to appear on my doorstep. With a handful of thankyous, I headed out into the crisp Boston night air.

  Wasn’t I supposed to be rewarded for taking risks? Don’t religions, cringeworthy self-help books and poets everywhere tell you to take the path less taken? Well, I had. Like a fool I had followed my impulses and imaginary visions, and instead of leading me to bliss, like Joseph Campbell had promised, I had emerged lost and broken, only to find all the people I loved and cared about had built their own paths and moved on.

  *

  I woke the next morning and tried to find my bearings. I was on another couch, in a living room surrounded by plants, dolls and stuffed birds, clocks that weren’t working and a pinball machine. I blinked up at a seemingly endless high ceiling. The sound of drilling somewhere in the building alerted my senses. I was at the artists’ community, outside Boston, on Will’s sofa.

  I stumbled over to his computer. On the upper right I saw a blinking 8:30am, and I let my eyes adjust to the screen. Facebook was open; the white-and-blue iconic print stared back at me, tempting me to log on. I hadn’t used Facebook since returning from Wigtown, knowing any sign of Euan would make me feel worse. I had wanted to log on every minute of every hour to see if I could find clues as to how he was or if he had been thinking of me. I feared, though, that I would become a human archaeologist, exploring things he had or had not written to a depth that suddenly would give them new meanings and motivations.

  In my tired, weak state, I stayed at Will’s computer, debating whether to type in my password. Surely it would make no difference now. I convinced myself that I was out of the critical window in which Facebook happenings would have an effect on my emotional state; I was close enough to the finish line to be safe.

  I quickly logged myself in and went to Euan’s profile. I couldn’t help smiling when I saw his picture. He had put up a photo I took of him in front of the shop, laughing and leaning against one of the book spirals. It was an attractive image; he looked happy, tall and fit. My eyes flicked over to his wall and then my chest tightened.

  Euan’s profile was covered in new comments and most of them were by women. Unlike me, his social life had not ceased because of our separation. In fact, the tone on his Facebook page was positively upbeat, back to his bachelor happy-go-lucky self. The women on his profile page spoke to me, their voices chanted loud and clear: you’re the last thing on his mind. I cared less about the mysterious new faces who left teasing, snide remarks and more about the ones I knew. Heather had left a message, to which he had responded, full of inside jokes. On reading it I felt excluded, non-existent. It made me panic. I hated the sense of competition it inspired. I did not want to feel as if I were constantly fighting off suitors. He was supposed to be my knight in shining armour, after all, and here I was, brandishing my own sword.

  I was breathing deeply now, my lungs trying to catch up with my heart, which was beating as if lightning had struck it. My eyes scrolled down, now addicted, wanting to find every piece of the puzzle that could lead me to Euan during my
absence. At the bottom of the page was a message from Heather. My eyes stopped, as if I had found what I had been looking for, the “x” on the map. All it said was, “You better not be late this time, or you’ll be buying the drinks.”

  The phone rang and rang and rang. I was breaking our promise. With three days to go, I had lost all my will power. I did the calculation quickly. It was three in the afternoon here, so about eight in the evening there. Suddenly, there was a click and Euan picked up.

  Soft music murmured in background. I heard someone laughing. Euan’s voice was distracted and giddy. “Hello?”

  “Hi, it’s me.” Sudden rage swelled over me. “Where are you?”

  “Um, look, can I call you back? I just arrived.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m at a party.” There was a pause.

  “Oh. Whose party?”

  “Heather’s.” He was drunk; he sounded warm and relaxed.

  The laughter in the background got louder. My rage was overpowering and I tried to splutter some coherent words out. “In Dublin?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You sound angry.”

  “Well…”

  “Look, you wanted me to explore, to figure out my feelings.”

  “Are you two dating?”

  There was only silence on the other end. His silence was indignant rather than apologetic. It unnerved me. After weeks of not speaking, this was not what I had pictured as our first reunion call.

  “Of course I’m not dating her. I’m dating a crazy American Fox,” Euan said unhappily. “Don’t you trust me?”

  I paused, realising I didn’t. “So are you coming, then?”

  Music blasted loud from a back room and Euan sounded distracted. “I’m not sure yet.”

  “But it’s only three days away.”

  “Look, Jessy, this is not the time to talk about it.” His voice remained calm. “I’ve got to go.”

  I was incandescent, inarticulate.