The Language of Stars

by Louise Hawes

  Once the all-terrain had rumbled off on its puffed-up tires, both H and Fry had forgotten all about the poem. The two of them fist-bumped and chortled, and generally congratulated themselves on how cool they’d been and on how narrowly we’d all avoided a very unpleasant second date with the Whale Point police.

  “I do not want to see that no-lips DA ever again.” Fry was already packing up, shaking out our towels and folding them into sloppy squares. For what it’s worth? That wasn’t actually true about the DA having no lips. It’s just that whenever he’d made a point to the judge at our hearing, he had stopped and looked at her with his eyebrows joined and his lips sucked in.

  And, let’s face it, he had lots of points to make. All the things we’d destroyed. All the bad choices we’d made. “Party animals,” he’d called us. Hardly human. Thugs who didn’t know any better than to throw up or pee on someone else’s life.

  “Got to give the Whale Point Beach Patrol props, man,” H told Fry. “They have a nose for trouble. Remember when we took your cousin’s Jeep out on the dunes at North Beach?”

  “Yeah.” Fry looked positively nostalgic. “We just missed a thousand-dollar fine that night. Who knew they used undercover SUVs, huh?”

  And then they were off, talking about the glory days. It was as if the fire had never happened. As if the trial were a movie they’d seen and already forgotten. What counted more, what totally absorbed them, were the days they had courted disaster, just the two of them. The days Fry now labeled BS, Before Sarah. All the way home, even though I was in the backseat beside Fry, I might as well have stayed at the beach. All the near misses, all the hilarious comebacks, and the sly moves—they were all BS.

  Which made me wonder why I was the only one who couldn’t put the trial behind us. Who kept playing the days before the bash over in my head every chance I got: What if I’d said, loud and clear, “I don’t want to do this”? What if I’d told Fry how much that little house meant to me?

  “What’s up, Sarah?” Fry had finally noticed I was staring out the window instead of waiting breathlessly for the next adventure of Fry Man and Lieutenant H.

  And that’s when I thought of it. “I’m not really the best judge of poetry,” I told them now. “Why don’t we take H’s poem to the source?”

  They both looked at me, waiting.

  “I know where Rufus Baylor is staying. The house is right on the next block.” It sounded so logical. It made such sense. “Let’s show him H’s poem.”

  “Are you kidding?” Fry stifled a laugh. “Go see the teacher when school’s out?” He let his laugh go now, but it came out more like a growl. “The court can order me to see that old man during class, but nothing’s going to make me kiss up to him in my free time.”

  H, for once, felt differently. “Do you really think he’d look at it?”

  I remembered Baylor’s marble eyes, his smile. I pictured the four of us sitting in a living room, instead of a classroom. “I’m sure he would,” I told H.

  H checked out his jefe in the rearview. “We could just drop it off, man. It would only take a second.” He turned to look at us now, full face, and delivered the clincher: “It’s for love.”

  The four of us, sitting in a beach cottage: wicker furniture, a straw rug, a fishnet or a pod of tin dolphins on the wall. Wouldn’t it be easier to tell our poet there? To slip it into conversation? To say, “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  It took some negotiation. And it took promising that H and I would leave the poem with Baylor while Fry stayed in the car. It wasn’t hard at all to find the place. The walk there with my mother came back easily, since it was probably the longest continuous hand-holding we’d ever done. (She couldn’t find a sitter, the interview was important, and I was much too young to leave at home.) A few minutes later, then, H pulled up in front of the bungalow that was now the temporary home of the world’s most famous bard. On the outside, it didn’t look very different from the cottages on each side of it; its only distinction, and the only memory I had of the place, was a giant magnolia tree that nearly dwarfed the little house and that shed pale-pink petals all over the walk to the front door.

  But when Baylor opened that door, nothing looked like I’d expected: There were no fishnets or tin dolphins, no rattan carpet. Instead, there were flowers everywhere . . . and a very angry guard cat. Our poet smiled when he saw us, but the calico that had wrapped itself around his feet was a lot less friendly. It was one of the biggest cats I’d ever seen, and it hissed and whined so loudly that both H and I stepped back. “Allow me to introduce Carmen,” Baylor told us. “She comes with the house.”

  The orange monster continued to spit at us until Baylor stooped down and scooped it up in his arms, scratching its ears in a fearless, roughhouse caress I would never have dared. “Her bark is much worse than her bite.” He stroked the cat again, which started up a rumble that sounded like an outboard but was probably a purr. “In fact, she has almost no teeth.”

  Our teacher seemed glad to see us. But then, Baylor seemed glad to see everyone. “I wish you could stay,” he told us. “But they’ve invited me to a boat launch. I’m afraid I have to leave in a few minutes.” He was wearing the jacket I’d seen him in at Mamselle’s, but underneath it, his jeans and T-shirt announced he wasn’t big on dressing up, even for special occasions.

  “I’ve been to so many ribbon cuttings and grand openings in the last few days,” he told us, “I’m getting handshake blisters.” Which didn’t stop him from shaking our hands, from offering us seats on an overstuffed sofa surrounded by souvenirs from his hosts’ world travels (masks from Bali, he explained, tapestries from Guatemala, kimono belts from Japan). But overwhelming everything, filling half the room and forcing us to push them aside to see each other, were dozens of floral arrangements. There were vases of peonies and irises on the coffee table and end tables, pots of tulips and begonias on the mantel and floor and bookcases, not to mention a cluster of small fruit trees wearing WELCOME TO WHALE POINT ribbons on their trunks. Our teacher caught us staring at the plant life that had taken over the place. “Y’all live in an extremely friendly town,” he acknowledged. “They say hello with flowers.”

  “Everybody’s glad you’re here,” I told him. I remembered the poetic signs at the supermarket, the Baylor specials all over town. “Very glad.”

  “Even us,” H added before he realized what he’d said. “I mean, it’s a pleasure to be punished by you.” He heard himself again, and knew he hadn’t made things better. “That is, I—”

  “I think I understand, Mr. . . . who are you, young man? I’m ashamed to say I remember your Taurus, but not your name.” Rufus Baylor leaned back in the armchair he’d pulled up to face us, and Carmen the Cat That Ate Cleveland jumped up to settle in his lap.

  “Hector, sir. Hector Losada.”

  “Well, Hector and Sarah Not Sarai, how can I help before I’m off to launch that boat?” He stroked Carmen’s head, and the roar-purr started up again.

  “You see, sir.” H reached for the precious polyethylene packet, and took out the page on which he’d written his opus to Miss Kinney. “I’ve created a poem.” He held it out, as if it were an offering.

  I’ve created a poem?! He made it sound like he’d just finished the Mona Lisa. Or carved those faces on Mount Rushmore.

  “For me?” Baylor leaned forward, ready for more flowers, another welcome-to-Whale-Point tribute.

  Latin toughs might not blush, but H sure looked embarrassed. “Not exactly, sir. You see, I wrote this for someone special.” More embarrassment. “I mean, someone else special.” He watched Baylor unwrap the paper, and I swear I smelled sea salt and beer as those hammy, overblown words, hit the air. “It’s just that I’d like to make sure it’s good enough before she sees it.”

  Baylor looked up from the page, smiled. “You’d like a manuscript consultation?”

  H looked uncertain. “I think so, sir.”

  Our poet folded the poem
up again, stood, and deposited Carmen on the floor. The cat looked surprised, but preserved her dignity by pretending she had somewhere better to be. She shook herself, then ambled slowly toward the kitchen we could see behind a counter that ran along the back of the room.

  Meantime, Baylor had wrestled his way between the Welcome trees to a sleek teak desk across the room. It didn’t look anything like the rolltop he’d worked on at the cottage, but it was obviously what he was using now. It was piled high with papers and letters and two old tin cups bristling with pens and pencils. He laid H’s poem on top of one of the paper piles. “I’d be glad to look this over, Hector. But I’m afraid I can’t do it justice right now.”

  H was clearly unhappy about leaving his sacred poem with anyone, even Rufus Baylor. To give him credit, though, he shook our host’s hand again and walked beside him to the door. All with only one worried glance at the desk where his masterpiece lay.

  Baylor must have caught the look. (Did the man miss anything?) “I’ll give your poem back in class Thursday,” he assured H. “That will give me time to live with it, soak it in.”

  H seemed satisfied, even excited. So we said good-bye, walked out of the cottage with our poet, then watched him get into his mess of a car and drive off. As he did, I couldn’t help wondering how Rufus Baylor would hold up under the strain of keeping his promise. How could anyone bear, even for a few days, to live with Hector Losada’s poetry?

  For JK from HL

  Your nearness makes everyone sigh

  Your beauty makes class fly

  Your hair makes an honest man lie

  Your gentle touch makes me want to just curl up and die.

  So please take pity on me, sighing and poor

  because my heart is yearning to soar

  to that faraway heaven behind your locked door

  where we two will be happy forevermore.

  I Miss Old Friends and Visit a New Neighbor

  Fry had spent the time, while we were visiting Baylor, doing what he loved. He’d listened to music, and now he was ready to listen to more. “Let’s go back to H’s,” he proposed, pulling out his earbuds and wrapping his arm around me. “I feel a retrospective coming on.”

  Which could only mean Millennial Carolina Funk: little-known bands that he and H had discovered when they were both in junior high. It wasn’t music that I knew or, truth be told, cared about. And it was sure to lead to more reminiscences about times and fun that were all Before Sarah. But of course, when I settled into the nest his arms made and Fry whispered that he couldn’t wait to share the next song with me (passing me half his headset so that the cord was stretched like a heart between us), I knew I’d ride along. Go along. Tag along.

  That song, it turned out, was one Fry and H had first heard live at a club two towns over. A club that had never carded and, not surprisingly, no longer existed. So even before we got to H’s place, the two of them were in full nostalgia mode. And I was left out. Again. I had no one to talk to about my adventures Before Fry, such as they were. My BF days had gone up in flames, right along with Rufus Baylor’s memories. There was no way my old friends would want to talk to me now. And the truth was, even before I became convinced they were ashamed of me, I had acted as if I were ashamed of them. Who knows? Fry might have learned to like them, even if he wouldn’t get all their jokes. Even if he didn’t share their love of art films, or ’60s TV, or fantasy games. But I never took a chance. One awkward moment between Wanda and H, and I’d given up.

  While Fry and H were going down memory lane, then, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. And missing the friends I’d never even told good-bye: Alicia, who loved Middle-earth and all things orange, especially her apricot-colored granny shawl. Brett, who along with Marcia, Thea, Eli, and me made up our homework theater, where we acted out assignments. (Eli had worn a beard and glasses when he was Pythagoras for geometry, even though we explained that glasses weren’t invented before right triangles.) And Wanda and George, who both had red hair and who liked poetry almost as much as Miss Kinney did, who still waved when they saw me in the hall. I sometimes waved back, unless I was with Fry, who usually had his arm around me, so I didn’t want to move. Stay.

  It wasn’t just my friends I missed. I was in theater withdrawal, too. Since my understudy’s role last fall, I hadn’t tried out for a single production. But I still remembered that jumped-up, scrambled feeling in my stomach just before the curtain went up. And the way the shabby, one-sided sets and thrift-store furniture suddenly became real, while relatives and friends in the audience faded into a hazy, underexposed photo behind the lights.

  “Coast is clear, cuates.” H pulled his car into the empty driveway. Both his parents were still at work. “Let’s finish that beer.”

  We lugged the cooler inside, and sat in the immaculate living room to unpack the drinks and salsa on a light wood coffee table that was practically begging for a stain. (I hoped Mrs. Losada didn’t feel the way my mother did about chips and sweaty cans.) Fry and I took the sofa, and H corralled the recliner, tilting himself and his beer as far back as he could go. “Here’s to the last three days of school,” he announced, taking a long sip, then sighing and belching at once as he settled into the chair.

  “Whoa! I just saw a ghost.” Fry shook his head at H, not a slow, that’s-amazing shake, but fast and hard, as if he were trying to knock something loose. “My dad used to fall into his chair exactly like that.” Fry’s father had died when he was twelve, and he hardly ever talked about him. Now I felt his body tense up beside me. It made the whole room tighter, more uncomfortable, as if the walls had just moved in on us.

  “Whenever he was well enough, he’d come downstairs.” It wasn’t even Fry’s voice we were hearing. It was smaller, quieter, and not at all cool. “Then he’d call me over to sit on the arm of his chair. ‘Small Fry,’ he’d say, ‘how was your day?’ ”

  He was staring straight ahead. I thought of Shepherd not looking at me not looking at him. Fry was seeing someone, all right. But it wasn’t H or me. “Of course, I never got to tell him. The phone was always ringing. Sometimes he’d talk straight through dinner.”

  “Hey, man,” H jumped right in, fearless. “Your dad? He did what he had to, you know?”

  For once, I was glad it was H’s full-time job to put Fry first, to keep him happy. Fry downed half his can now, and I felt the tension melt away. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Making book is the perfect job for someone who can’t get out of bed.”

  It was my strict policy not to ask my prince about his dad, because whenever anyone else did, it put him on edge. But I was father-hungry enough to have pieced together the story, the story of a miner who’d retired to the shore on disability, then wasted away from lung disease. Someone who took sports bets out of his home until the day he collapsed and died. “It was a good day,” Fry told me once. “Everyone went heavy for the Vikings, but the Redskins won.”

  Now he scooped the last of the salsa up with a chip. “So let’s talk about something else,” he said. “Something with a little more flavor.”

  He grinned at H. “It’s your house, your call. Pepperoni, or meatballs with anchovies?”

  I hoped H would opt out of anchovies (I always picked them off, anyway), and I also hoped that, someday, I wouldn’t have to learn about Fry secondhand. I’d never known, for instance, that his nickname came from his dad calling him Small Fry. Any more than I’d guessed what missing there must have been behind that smart remark about the Vikings. Knowing that Fry dreamed of daddies, too, made me want to put my arms around him.

  I knew some guys weren’t good at showing their feelings, and my own life certainly wasn’t loaded with people of either gender who did. But wasn’t that part of being in love? Weren’t you supposed to confide things to your girlfriend? Things you wouldn’t tell anyone else, not even your second-in-command, who never left your side and who might as well have been your brother since you spent so much time together, more even than you devoted to
said girlfriend? What if Fry had been able to let me in?

  Soul baring and pizza aren’t really a good fit, though. Once the pie arrived, the safest topic of conversation was, once again, ancient history. H remembered the time he and Fry were in seventh and eighth grades, and too young to know that the “haunted house” three seniors dared them to visit was actually a funeral home. And Fry recalled the night he, H, and two blind dates found a giant dead shark on the beach.

  Me? I let them talk, while I remembered, too. Once, after I’d landed a small part in our junior high spring play, Alicia and Marcia knew how nervous I was. They came to my house every day after school to feed me my two lines. By the time the play started, they knew them as well as I did. Long after the show, we used them as codes: “Alas! I have been poorly used in this affair” meant we didn’t get the test grade we thought we should have. And “I foreswear your proposal, Sir Edgar” meant we didn’t want to do what someone asked us to.

  I didn’t mention these memories, of course. Play rehearsals weren’t likely to compete with funeral homes for Fry’s attention. But I couldn’t help thinking what fun it had been for the three of us girls to have our own secret language. It was just as thrilling, and lots more useful, than finding a dead shark. Even now, I was sure that if I’d walked up to either Alicia or Marcia that very minute and told her, “I foreswear your proposal, Sir Edgar,” she would have known exactly what I meant. And I was afraid, in a way I had no words for, that this made me closer to both those old friends than I could ever get to Fry.

  * * * *

  There was only one more day until poetry school. I could have waited. But I found myself walking to Rufus Baylor’s home away from home the very next afternoon. I took his first book of poems with me because I wanted to ask him about the one that was already my favorite. I told myself the reason I didn’t let Fry or H know where I was going, was that I didn’t want H pestering our resident celebrity about returning his pathetic poem.