The Language of Stars

by Louise Hawes

  Wanda’s misery was “writ large,” as Miss Kinney loved to say. It was just as big, just as dramatic, as her happiness usually was. I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded (even though she couldn’t see me) and listened.

  “I was looking forward to this so much,” she wailed. “I told everyone, simply everyone, that I was going out with you and Rufus.” She sobbed again or hiccuped or both. “I was just getting used to calling him that—oh, Sarah! This is the sort of thing that happens once in a lifetime. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never have another chance to spend an entire evening with someone so famous, so generous, so . . .”

  “. . . late?” I finished for her. Rufus had called a cab, and it was waiting at the top of the driveway when I looked out the window. “I am so sorry, Wanda. The taxi’s here.” I’d been counting on sharing this outing with her, too. “I wish you were coming with us, you know I do. My two best poetry buds, it would have been so . . .”

  Rufus hobbled in, sporting his one and only jacket with a dark-green tee I’d never seen before. INNER SPACE, it said right over his heart.

  “I have to go,” I told Wanda. “But I’ll give you a full report.”

  Wanda sniffed. “Everything?” she asked. “Every single detail?”

  “Promise.”

  * * * *

  By the time Shepherd hustled us out to the cab, I was right—we were late. Luckily, it was midweek, so there wasn’t much traffic, and only one or two of the horse-drawn carriages that summer people loved to ride around in. We got to town before curtain, but once we arrived at the theater, it really hit home that this was my poet’s first full outing without Shepherd to help. We moved a lot slower than we would have with my father along. Rufus, of course, had asked him to join us, but Shepherd had declined. “Listening to music is one thing,” he’d told us, “but sitting still for a whole goddamn play is another.” (Which, in the language of Shepherd, probably meant he understood how much I wanted this night to be just me and my poet. I was getting pretty good at translating!)

  But if we weren’t exactly setting speed records, we made it in the end. Rufus did just fine, stumbling only once when he got out of the taxi. He hauled himself up the theater steps and into the main hall, where we worked our way down the middle aisle to the orchestra section. My poet covered ground by hopping like a wounded bird, a looping, broken gait that, if it didn’t look very graceful, got him where he needed to go. An usher handed me two programs just as a tiny orchestra began playing in front of the stage. That’s when a second usher, the one who was supposed to seat us, spotted Rufus’s crutches. And voilà! An upgrade: He moved us to the first two seats in the very front row!

  Which is why it felt as if we were right on the deck of a storm-tossed ship when the play started. And right on the shore of a magical island, watching the same shipwreck in the second scene. The two characters who watched with us were a wise old magician named Prospero and his daughter, Miranda. They had been marooned on the island for twelve years, with only Prospero’s books and each other to keep them company. (Unless, of course, you counted a whole cast of spirits and sprites created by the magician’s awesome powers.)

  The actor who played Prospero had a mop of silver hair, and he was a big man, like Rufus. So when he talked about all the time he’d spent teaching his daughter on their deserted island, I couldn’t help but think about those first morning pages, when I’d had my poet all to myself; when we’d stayed in and played with words, just the two of us.

  The Tempest, it turned out, had everything—amazing costumes and sets, storms, shipwrecks, duels, ghostly pageants, nonstop special effects. And the characters? I wanted to play every one of those roles! I’d never read the play because Bernhardt had never acted in it. But now, in the middle of all that magic, I did a little casting after the fact: Even while I watched a local college student, hoisted up on wires, “fly” across the stage, I pictured the Divine Sarah herself as a charming, mischievous version of Ariel, the fairy who helps Prospero with his magic—Tinker Bell, minus the schmaltz and the Disney costume.

  But my favorite character of all that night was Caliban, the island’s resident monster. He looked just like my collectible Hulk, only a lot bigger. He was a huge misfit who didn’t know his own strength, crude and ugly and thick as a post. But I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the way Prospero treated him—the same way some people behave with their dogs, as if it doesn’t matter what you do or say to them. Granted, Caliban wasn’t pretty to look at, but he had a poet’s instincts. Or at least, just like me and Rufus, he heard things talking all the time. Voices everywhere.

  Which is why I was glad that as part of the happy ending, Prospero gave the whole island back to Caliban when he and Miranda were rescued. He knew that his daughter had her own life to live beyond his books and spells. So he decided to perform just enough magic to get them back to the real world, and then to bury his wand and spell book forever.

  When the applause and the curtain calls (four!) were over, and the house lights went up, Rufus and I barely had a chance to stand up before people who’d recognized him walked over to shake hands. First, there was a couple, about Aunt J.’s age, who’d been reading Rufus’s poetry for years. In fact, the man confided, he’d proposed to his wife ten years before, by reciting a love poem from The Wait-a-Minute Bush. “She said yes,” he told my poet, doing the double handshake and reporting something we’d pretty much already guessed. “Now our third grader, Timmy Wayne, has gone and memorized six of your poems.” (Fortunately, this prodigy had not come to the play with his parents and couldn’t treat us to a recitation.)

  Next, there was a woman who’d read about what Rufus was doing with “those poor, lost children.” She had a long, earnest face, and clutched his arm when she told him he was the best example they could possibly have. Finally, there was an English teacher from one of the middle schools who felt the same way, and oh, also, would Rufus have time to read a few things she’d written?

  My poet was generous and attentive with them all. He shook their hands, he answered questions about his cast, he signed their programs, though he wanted it clear, he said, that he hadn’t been around when the play was written. And yes, I had the same feeling I’d had in class—Rufus seemed to need these groupies as much as they needed him. Which is probably why he promised the English teacher he would read her poems. But the best news, the sweetest news, was that my poet introduced me to each one of these autograph hounds, not as a member of his Bad Kids Class, but as “my friend Sarah.” And then he added, “She’s been sharing some of her work with me,” or, “We’re revisiting Shakespeare together.”

  * * * *

  It was late when the cab dropped us back at the Hendricks’. Shepherd was already asleep on the couch in the living room. We tiptoed into the kitchen, Carmen padding along with us, winding between our legs and begging for a late-night snack. “I loved it all, every minute,” I whispered to Rufus. “Thank you so much!”

  “Well, I was delighted to have your company,” my poet told me. While I found the cat food (which my smart father had moved to a bottom shelf), Rufus rummaged through the cupboards, brought out two cups and a package of coffee filters. “Besides,” he added, fitting the filter into the coffee machine, “I had an ulterior motive.” I could see his smile, even in that unlit room. “I’m hoping, Sarah, that the play we saw tonight has left you eager to keep writing.”

  I emptied a whole envelope of Tender Kitten into Carmen’s bowl. Ungluing herself from my legs, she hunkered down beside it, throwing each bite back deep in her mouth, as if she were afraid it might escape before she could swallow it. Maybe Rufus had been serious about her having no teeth?

  “I don’t know about writing,” I told my poet. “But tonight certainly made me want to get back onstage.” I helped him with his crutches, and we both sat at the counter, waiting for the coffee brewer to finish humming and hissing.

  “Really?” Rufus looked grave, surprised. “Wouldn’t you rather write
the script than mouth someone else’s words?” He fixed me with that trigger finger. “Remember your poem? I believe ‘secondhand words’ was the way you put it.”

  “It’s just that no one would ever play Miranda the same way I would.” Carmen’s sandpapery tongue scrubbed my leg, and I leaned down to pet her. “Or Ariel. Or yes, even Prospero.” I turned the trigger finger back at him.

  “When you play a part you love,” I explained, “it’s like a glove that fits perfectly.” The rustling of sheets on the couch told me I was speaking too loudly. “No dangling fingertips,” I added, whispering again. “No thumbhole you can’t squeeze into. It’s just right.”

  Rufus nodded. “You have a way with words, Miss Wheeler.” The coffee machine had stopped, and he watched as I filled the two mugs he’d found. One was decorated with a snowman, the other featured a drowsy baby with a cartoon bubble over its head. “I liked what I heard from you in morning pages today,” he said. “It’s a comforting thought that the line might go on.”

  “The line?” I remembered what Rufus had told me about his sons not having a poetic bone in their bodies. Was that why I was suddenly Miss Wheeler, instead of Sarah?

  “Don’t look so worried,” he said. “Just because you’re elected, doesn’t mean you have to take office right away.”

  “Office?” ONE CUP, the speech bubble on my coffee mug said, AND I’M OUT LIKE A LIGHT.

  “Oh, Sarah.” Thank heaven I was back to Sarah and he was smiling again. “What I’m saying is how very talented I think you are. And how good, how deeply good, it feels after all these years to have someone I can share this work with. Someone to whom it means more than anything else.”

  Was poetry more important to me than anything? I wasn’t sure. But I wanted to make Rufus happy, so I smiled, too. “Let’s not tell my mother I’m going to be a poet just yet,” I said. “She has this thing about my becoming a doctor.”

  My poet nodded again. “So I’ve observed.” He took a sip from the snowman mug, then gave me another grin, bigger this time. “But perhaps she’d settle for your accepting an interim appointment, as my amanuensis.”

  “Amanu . . . ?”

  “It means secretary.” Rufus winced. “Actually, the Latin root means “slave.” But that’s not quite what I have in mind. You see, once I’m back on my feet, I’m determined to be writing regularly. Religiously, you might say.”

  That was good. That was very good.

  “And I’m going to need an assistant. I’m hoping you’ll consider it an internship, a way to help me and train at the same time.”

  Why did this feel like another road map to the future? Not the same as my mother’s plans, not exactly. Still it was clear Rufus had done a whole lot of thinking about this without even asking me. “It’s just that I love acting, too. Those voices I hear?” I tried to explain. “When everything talks?” My poet said nothing. “I get to try them all out when I’m onstage. I can do anything, be anything.”

  I took a sip of coffee, but hardly tasted it. “Bernhardt made sculpture,” I told him, not sure if I was helping or making things worse. My mouth was on autopilot, my heart blindsided by this new scheme of his. “She wrote books and poetry, too.”

  “Divide and conquer may work in war,” Rufus told me, sternly. “But it doesn’t make much sense in art.”

  I didn’t know what to say. What did this have to do with war?

  “You can’t live up to your gift without caring, my dear Miss Wheeler.” He sounded as though he were behind a podium. “And there’s not as much time as you think. Before you know it . . .” He stopped, looked toward the window, the velvet shadows outside. “Before you know it,” he started again, “you’ll be old and you’ll find you’re leaving nothing behind.”

  “I’m so proud you like what I write,” I told him. Proud? More like ecstatic, more like saved. “But I’m pretty sure I need to give acting a try before I make up my mind to be a poet.”

  Rufus didn’t seem to be listening.

  “It’s like a living thing.” I tried again. “The dialogue, I mean. The talk-talk-talking. It never stops.” I opened my hands, let the noises of the night fill them: the glass-dampened throb of crickets, the rush of a plane overhead, the deep breath of the ocean behind it all.

  “I love poetry, honestly I do.” I swam in those marble eyes. “But I want more, too. I want to walk out onstage and feel a fresh start, a scary, jumped-up new beginning every time.” Those eyes, how kindly they met mine. “I want to be Sarah, not Sarai.”

  That’s when I noticed he was crying. Just a little, just enough that I saw the shine in the moonlight from the window. “It seems,” he told me, “I’ve fallen into the parent trap.” He peered into the dim living room, where Shepherd’s bedcovers on the couch stirred, rose up like nervous wings, then settled again. “It seems I owe you an apology.”

  If you lined up all the things I had to be sorry about, they would probably have made a large intestine or a moon shot. But Rufus? He hadn’t done anything except make things one bejillion percent better. “What on earth for?” I asked.

  “For trying to live your life. For pushing you into a future you may not even want.” Another glance toward the couch. “If you were my own daughter, I couldn’t have handled it worse.

  “I’ve been so busy turning you into a poet, I never stopped to ask whether you wanted to be one. I was trying to keep you locked up on our magic island.” He sighed. “But I forgot that you’ve got a great deal more life ahead of you than I do.”

  I wished the ghost on the couch would push off its sheets and sit up. I was sure Shepherd could put an end to this sad talk. But he’d buried his head under one arm and was snoring.

  “The truth is, I’m afraid, Sarah.”

  “Afraid?”

  “There’s that face again.” A thin smile now, a sliver. “No, not of dying. Of not finishing.”

  I waited.

  “I have hundreds of poems up here.” Rufus tapped his head. “And I don’t want my life to end before I get them onto paper.”

  And I didn’t want to talk about this. It felt like ashes and faded photographs. I folded my arms, remained silent.

  “But when I heard myself just now? When I looked at you, hiding from me behind that cup?” Rufus shook his head. “I remembered what it’s like to be at the beginning. To have choices.”

  I uncrossed my arms.

  “I want you to know,” he told me, “that I plan on being in the front row for your next play.” Shepherd turned in his sleep, an owl hooted outside the window, and I suddenly noticed how good my coffee smelled.

  “It may only be a walk-on,” I warned him. “But I’ll take what I can get.”

  “So will I, Sarah.” Rufus made a toast, clinking his snowman against my sleepy baby. “So will I.”

  CALIBAN

  (To servants from the wrecked ship)

  Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

  Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

  Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

  Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,

  That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

  Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

  The clouds methought would open, and show riches

  Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,

  I cried to dream again.

  —The Tempest, Act 3, Scene 2

  Good-Bye, Sweet Prince

  No poetry. At vets with Margrt. Dog is ok.

  I’d stayed up after the play doing poetry homework, wearing a blindfold I hardly needed, wandering around in the dark. I thought maybe if I read H’s text message over, it would make more sense. But it didn’t. I knew H had been driving Margaret to our early writing sessions, but I didn’t have any idea what dog he was talking about. Did Margaret’s family own a dog? Had they hit a dog on the way over? Only one thing was clear: Morning pages would be minus at least two regulars.

  As I wa
lked to the Hendricks’, the sky darkened, threatening rain, which probably explained why, when I reached the little house, no one else had shown up, either. H’s text said the dog was going to be okay: good. And now it seemed I would have all morning alone with Rufus: better!

  “Even your father has deserted us,” Rufus told me when I relayed H’s message. “He had to go to the restaurant, but he left us with coffee.” He nodded at the cups and a plate of rolls set out on the table in front of the couch. “I think it’s a plot to wean me. He says I’m nearly ready to manage on my own.”

  “How much longer for the cast?” I walked with him to the couch, watched him drop heavily into the cushions, then prop his colorful, autographed leg on a stool. The early sun, filtered through clouds, threw soft, fuzzy shadows over everything—his shoulders, the tabletop, the rug.

  “I’m told I can stop showering with a plastic bag over my leg in six more weeks.” Rufus leaned his crutches against the couch. “That, I can assure you, will be a day to celebrate.”

  We chatted awhile, and I assumed that, after small talk and coffee, we would do what we always had: write, side by side. Just like always, I would watch as much as I wrote, taking mental notes on how he sat (leaning forward, like he might dive into the page), how he sharpened his pencil (not too sharp, otherwise it would break just when you needed it most), how often he tapped the skin between his nose and his left eye (as if he could jiggle just the right combination of words out of his head).

  Later, Rufus would catch my eye and ask me if I’d mind listening to something. Mind? Each time he asked, I wondered if he was joking. Did he truly have no idea how the music he wrote made me shiver? How I could never hear too much?

  But none of that happened. I didn’t hear any of his work. In fact, neither of us wrote a single word. All because, in between sips of coffee, I kept taking peeks at my cell. I’d put all Fry’s poems together in a special folder right on the phone’s home screen. And sometimes, like sneaking a piece of candy, I glanced at one. I’m afraid I wasn’t nearly as good at undercover reading and texting as Fry. We’d been sitting there only a few minutes before He Who Didn’t Miss a Trick and Had Finally Graduated from Technology 101 got wise to me.