The Night of the Comet

by George Bishop

  She turned and went back to the closet. I decided that if she came to the balcony doors and looked out, that would be a sign that she was thinking of me; that would be my signal to go visit her tonight. I would throw on my coat, hop on my bike, and in five minutes I’d be standing beside her in her room, not as a ghost but for real. Enough of my damn timidity. What was I waiting for? Peter was right: we had made out on the floor of her bedroom, we were practically lovers already. We could at least share a goodbye kiss before she left for the holiday.

  “Follow your heart,” as my mother said, “and the rest will follow.”

  Just then our phone rang downstairs. My father went to pick it up. I heard his muffled voice coming through the floor as he talked with whoever was on the line. He sounded confused.

  Prompted by I didn’t know what, I swung the telescope down to check the patio room of the Martellos’ house. The lights were on, the TV was playing. And there was Barbara Martello standing by their couch, talking on their phone. I watched her speak, and I heard my father answer in our living room below me. This was odd; Barbara was supposed to have been out shopping with my mother. But I figured that my mother must’ve been on her way home now, and so I thought little more of it.

  I tilted back upstairs to Gabriella. She was still moving around in her bedroom, laying out her clothes. In my mind’s eye I was already pulling my bike from our garage shed and heading down the driveway. I saw myself standing up on the pedals as I raced out of our neighborhood … and then I was halfway over the Franklin Street bridge, with the red light of the water tower blinking over my shoulder, the stars blinking above … and then I was turning in past the Beau Rivage sign and speeding down her street to her house.…

  Junior! This is a surprise, her mother would say, opening the door. Of course, come in. Gabby’s right upstairs. Can I get you something? A Coke?

  From the corner of my eye, I caught the flash of headlights as a car turned down their driveway and into the garage. I swung the scope down in time to see Mr. Martello walking into the patio room downstairs. Barbara met him and then followed him as he went out of the room and returned with a bottle of beer. They stopped near the patio doors. Barbara pointed once toward our house. Frank spread his hands, explaining something. She crossed her arms, unconvinced by whatever he was saying.

  I left them there and looked again upstairs, where I found Gabriella standing now directly behind her balcony doors. She leaned in and put her face against the glass, cupping her hands around her eyes. Then she pulled her head back, shaped her hands into a telescope, and made as if to search in the direction of our house.

  My lights were off so it was impossible for her to see into my room. And yet she acted as if she knew I was watching her. She became playful. She hid behind the yellow curtain on one side of the door and poked her head out. Then she wrapped the curtain around her like a dress and began doing a kind of striptease. She snaked her arm out from the edge of the curtain, rolled her shoulder around, and then snapped the curtain up to her chin, hiding herself. She put a leg out and slowly slid the curtain up to reveal her foot, and then her calf, and then her knee, before dropping the curtain again over her leg. She laughed. I laughed, too. She was fully dressed, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, so her show was more silly than serious, but all the same, I found it wildly exciting.

  While watching her, I heard, as though from far away, my mother return home. The car door slammed outside, and then the front door opened and closed behind her. In a weird mirroring of what I’d just seen at the Martellos’ house, I heard my father following my mother around downstairs. They came to a stop directly below my room, talking in tense, hushed voices. I could only make out a few of the words, but the tone was clear enough. They were arguing.

  Thibodaux? … Barbara? … Not an interrogation, a simple question … Frank … You admit it now … Because I knew what you’d say … I’m supposed to believe that? … Yes! Yes! What’s so hard to believe about that?

  I blocked out their voices and kept my eye on Gabriella. She had moved out from behind the curtain and was standing behind the balcony doors again. She wagged a finger in the air, as though scolding me. Then she looked down slyly and gripped the bottom of her T-shirt in her hands. She slowly raised it, sliding it from side to side, and then she flashed her chest at me and yanked her T-shirt back down.

  I almost knocked over the telescope in my excitement to leave. That was more than just an invitation; it was like an offer. I grabbed a sweater and shoes. Sitting on my bed to tie the laces, I heard my parents’ voices growing louder downstairs. Next door in her room, Megan had turned off her stereo and stopped singing.

  Answer me … No! … You’re lying to me … Don’t you talk to me like that … Admit it … The children … I don’t care! I don’t care!

  There was a sharp yelp from our mother, followed by a muffled thump.

  “Stop it! What are you doing?”

  The thought of meeting Gabriella vanished into the air as I ran to the door. My sister lurched out into the hallway at the same time I did. We hesitated, looking at each other, and in the dim light of the hall I saw that she was as worried as I was. I saw, too, that we both knew what was happening; at some level, we must’ve been expecting this moment for months. We went to the stairs, me in the lead.

  Our father stood over our mother, gripping her arm. She was buckled halfway to the floor. A drinking glass lay on its side on the rug. The room was dim, the colored Christmas lights blinking on the tree in the corner. Both our parents were breathing heavily, their faces red and distorted; they appeared to be vibrating all over. Our father snapped his head around when Megan and I stopped on the stairs.

  “Oh good, here they are,” he said.

  “Let go of me!” our mother said, trying to squirm free.

  “No, wait.” Keeping a tight hold on her arm, he spoke in an unnaturally loud, halting voice, as though he was restraining himself from shouting, or crying.

  “Children. Sorry to disturb you. Your mother and I are having an argument. Obviously. She lied to me about going out tonight with Frank Martello—”

  “I didn’t—”

  “No, no, you did. You certainly did. You lied. She said she was with Barbara, but she wasn’t. She was with Frank all evening. Frank Martello—”

  “Shopping! I told you, we were shopping for Christmas presents.”

  “—in Thibodaux, with Frank, doing god knows what. What do you think? Is that okay? Should we worry about that or not?”

  “Let go of her,” Megan said evenly.

  “Stop it. Just stop it! This is ridiculous,” our mother said. “They don’t have to hear this. We can go to our room.”

  “Oh, I think they’re old enough to hear this, don’t you? They’re old enough to know what’s going on in this family.”

  “Let go of her!” Megan repeated.

  Our mother glared up sideways at him. Biting off her words, she said, “It’s nothing. I told you. He’s my friend. We talk. We enjoy each other’s company.”

  “Is that what you do? You talk. What do you talk about? What can you and Frank possibly have to talk about?”

  “I don’t have to put up with this,” she said, and tugged away from him. He snapped her back and shook her roughly.

  “You think I don’t see what’s going on here? You think I don’t know?”

  “You’re hurting her!” Megan said.

  “My god, you must think I’m an idiot. You must think I’m as dumb as you are. But I’m not. Oh no, I know exactly what’s going on—”

  Our mother grunted, twisted around, and bit his hand. He hollered as she stumbled away from him.

  This wasn’t happening, I thought. This couldn’t be happening. Our parents didn’t fight like this. They didn’t even look like this. We’d all been swallowed up into some dark, alternate universe where these two impostor parents had taken the place of my own and were battling it out on the floor of our living room. I felt queasy and hot; I wan
ted to run and hide but I was stuck on the stairs, unable to move.

  Our father had stopped on the rug, his legs apart, his hands squeezed into fists, huffing. Our mother stood with the corner of the sofa between them, her head thrown back. When she spoke next, it was with a wild, vindictive sneer.

  “Okay, yes! You’re right! You’re right, I see him all the time. And you want to know what me and Frank do when we’re alone together? You want to know? We laugh at you. The Professor. Oh boy, oh boy, we laugh! Yeah, we have a grand old time. We think you’re hilarious. And then when we finish laughing at you, we do things you can’t even imagine … wonderful things … beautiful things. He takes me in his arms and he—”

  He shot a hand out and struck her face. For one startled second, no one moved. Then she opened her mouth and let out a sound I’d never heard from her before, a pained, animal-like yowl.

  She ran to their bedroom, shouting over her shoulder, “Leaving! … Gone! … Finished!”

  Megan shoved past me on the steps and ran after her, hissing at our father as she passed, “How dare you do that! How dare you!”

  I stayed frozen on the stairs. I heard my mother sobbing and knocking around in the bedroom while Megan tried to console her. My father paced below me in the living room, rubbing the hand he’d hit her with. He wheeled around and shouted at the bedroom.

  “Where’re you going? Frank’s house? What do you think’s going to happen? He’s going to leave his wife? Leave his wife and daughter? For you? Oh, that’s brilliant. That’s great. It’s good to see you’ve thought this all the way through.”

  She shouted back through the doorway, her voice teary and unclear. “Yes! Yes! You find that so hard to believe? That somebody actually cares for me? That somebody could love me?”

  He rushed into their bedroom, shouting something incomprehensible. Megan shoved him out. “Leave her alone!”

  My mother went on crying and shouting from the bedroom. “No, because you don’t even know what love is! You stopped loving me fifteen years ago. You don’t even like me. You despise me.”

  “Don’t put this on me! I’m not the one slutting around with the neighbor.”

  She stormed out of the room, a suitcase in her hand. Megan followed. He blocked their way, and they all three wrestled clumsily over the suitcase. The Christmas tree was knocked sideways, ornaments fell to the floor. “Where’re you going? Huh? Where do you think you’re going?” he grunted.

  My mother broke free and stumbled to the front door with the suitcase. Then she stopped and swung an arm around to point in the direction of the Martellos’. There was a smear of blood below her nose. Her face was a crumpling mask.

  “He loves me. Do you understand that? He—loves—me.”

  She turned and banged out through the front door and down the steps.

  Megan went after her. Our father tried to grab her arm. “Don’t you touch me!” she spat, and ran out to join our mother.

  He caught the door and shouted into the yard, “Fine! Go! Leave!”

  A dog began barking. The car backed up the drive. The red taillights crossed behind my father’s figure in the doorway and then rolled out of view down the street.

  After a long, stunned moment, my father turned around and came back inside. He walked stiffly to the middle of the room and, raking his hand through his hair, looked helplessly from side to side, as though he’d forgotten something.

  The room was silent but the air still echoed with the violence of their fight. The colored lights on the toppled tree blinked on and off. He stopped and looked up at me. His hair stood on end; a swollen, crooked vein running down the middle of his forehead throbbed in time with the blinking lights.

  “What the hell just happened here?” he said hoarsely.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  WHAT in the hell just happened?

  How to explain the sudden and calamitous turn of events that left my parents separated, Megan and my mother living with our grandparents on the other side of town, and my father and me pacing alone through the cold, dim rooms of our house? It didn’t seem possible, and yet it was.

  Christmas Eve, my father stood on the muddy ground of the backyard in his black raincoat, desperately scanning the sky for signs of the comet. From my bedroom window he looked like a large, sad, sagging crow. He straightened up to stretch his back, sighed visibly, and then bowed back to the telescope.

  Across the bayou, the Martellos’ house shone as brightly as ever. They’d left for the holiday, but the lights were on timers so that the decorations blazed to life every evening at dusk, like a promise that their absence was only temporary, they’d return soon.

  While above us, hidden behind the stars, the comet hurtled toward the Sun. Although we couldn’t see it, the comet, I was sure, could see us. Gazing down from its lonely circuit through the planets, it couldn’t have helped but feel sympathy for me, my sister, my mother and father, and all our baffled, battered hearts.

  Who were we? Where did we come from? How did we get here?

  Somewhere out beyond the invisible crystal sphere that surrounded our solar system, beyond the most distant, distant star, was the place at the edge of the universe where dreams were born and people never died and all that had ever happened was still happening. There, in that impossible place, my parents were still young and in love, newlyweds setting out on their honeymoon together.

  Squinting my eyes at the sky, I could almost see them myself. Look, there they were again, Alan and Lydia Broussard, hurrying along the line of passenger cars of the Sunset Limited at New Orleans Union Station. He was just twenty-two, a skinny boy with high-waisted trousers and Thom McAn loafers, struggling to carry both their bags. She was nineteen with a navy-blue polka-dotted dress that she thought looked like the one Audrey Hepburn wore in Sabrina; she carried a neat, sky-blue cosmetic travel case, a wedding present from an aunt. It was the middle of the night, and the air was spiced with the smell of diesel and tar, cigarettes and perfume. They were running late—Alan had had some dispute with the taxi driver over the fare. Steam hissed, announcements blared overhead: “Departing now from track nine …” As they trotted along they glimpsed wedges of sky and stars between the roof of the platform and the tops of the train cars.

  “Here it is! Here’s our car,” Alan said, and heaved their bags up into the doorway. He climbed aboard and held out a hand for his new wife. She was nervous; she’d never been on a train before. The gap between the step of the train and the edge of the platform looked enormous. Whistles were blowing, conductors were shouting. She hesitated.

  Who was this man, after all? And what did either of them know about marriage, or living with another person, or raising a family? Nothing at all. But they were in love, and love made people do crazy things, and—good god, the thing had already started moving.

  “Come on! Quick, give me your hand,” he shouted, and hauled her up into the train, where they fell into each other’s arms, laughing with relief and trepidation as the train pulled out of the station.…

  … and then, all too soon, the train was pulling back into the station and their honeymoon was over. They settled into the happy business of setting up a home. Lydia shopped for towels in town, Alan wanted a good lamp for his reading chair. He became handy with a paintbrush, and she learned how to gut and bake a chicken. A year quickly passed, and then suddenly one night Alan found himself pacing in the dim corridor of a hospital.

  From a radio at the nurses’ station in the corner—he would always remember this—came the mysterious signal of the Sputnik satellite as it passed overhead. Beep … beep … beep … beep … He was summoned to a room down the hall, and he dashed in to find his wife waking groggily in a bed. Lydia was sore; she hardly knew where she was; she remembered she was dreaming about … something. Stars and planets, a Russian robot beeping in space. She was handed a thing in a blanket, and when she looked down and saw the baffled, angry little person squirming and shaking her fists in the air, she laughed and c
ried with motherly recognition.…

  And then three more years somehow quickly passed and she was nursing a second baby, a son, in a corner of her bedroom while trying to keep an eye on Megan screaming and kicking her wooden blocks around the living room floor. “Alan!” she pleaded. “Can’t you do something?”

  Life rolled on, carrying our young family through countless changes of diapers, loads of laundry, summer flus and winter colds and middle-of-the-night upset stomachs.… There was our mother making a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for us at the counter.… There was my sister Megan sitting on a pony at a birthday party, crying her eyes out.… And there was my father reading aloud to me in bed at night from an illustrated anthology of Jules Verne. I pressed against the wall, snuggled beneath the sheets, while he lay beside me with the book tilted to the bed lamp so he could see the pages. He read about Captain Nemo and his voyage twenty thousand leagues under the sea in search of the mysterious sea monster, and the two astronomers who chased a golden meteor across Nebraska, and three bold adventurers who fired themselves to the Moon from a giant cannon on a beach in Florida.…

  A couple of years later, and now he was teaching me how to play baseball. It was a bright afternoon in early spring. My father had a library book propped open on the picnic table, consulting it over his shoulder as he tried to arrange my limbs to match the stance of a tough-looking blond-haired kid in a photograph.

  “Feet shoulder width apart … forty-five-degree angle … relaxed but secure grip … Right, good. Like that.”