She points to the deflated tent. “We need to get that up before I start dinner. You two can do it yourselves. It’s one of the new ones. Practically pops up on its own.”
Jilly kicks dirt. I start feeding the poles into the sleeves of the tent and tell her to get the pegs to secure it to the ground.
“I have to pee.”
“Go pee then,” I say.
“I can’t do it here.”
“Yes you can. Come on. You used to do it all the time!”
Mom splits another log in two.
“I don’t want to get stung on the butt.”
I sigh.
Mom says, “Take your sister to the bathroom. You remember where it is?”
I nod and we walk to the bathroom.
“Stop asking her about dating,” I say. “You’re going to ruin her weekend.”
“She shouldn’t be so antisocial. It’s not good for her.”
“You don’t know anything about anything,” I say. “She’ll do whatever she wants when she wants. And what do you know about dating anyway?”
Five minutes later we arrive back and Mom has the fire going and she’s fanning it with a paper plate. The tent is exactly how we left it, which is no surprise to me, but Jilly huffs and crosses her arms.
“Come on,” I say. “If we get this up fast, you can have two extra s’mores.”
The two of us have the tent up in five minutes. Jilly puts our sleeping mats down and opens our sleeping bags, then tosses our backpacks in, steps in, zips it up, and reads a book until we call her for dinner.
Mom is at peace. There is nothing like watching her cook fresh food on a fire, time it perfectly, and serve up a huge meal. And while we eat she puts a little water in the dishes she cooked with and boils them clean on the fire because that’s Mom. Efficient. Always thinking ahead. Ready for whatever happens next. Ready to split logs with a bowie knife or build an emergency bivouac. Ready to get divorced, too, I guess.
Jilly went to sleep hours ago and Mom is snoring softly in her camping chair with a blanket over her in front of the glowing low fire.
I’m watching Cassiopeia rise in the eastern sky. It was one of my first old constellations—easy to identify on account that it’s a big W. Or M. Depends which way you want to see it. But really it’s supposed to be a queen sitting on her throne. Like Mom.
To me, Cassiopeia looks like a bunch of other things. Ever since I showed it to Jilly last year and she said it looked like boobs, that’s the first thing I think of. But it also looks like the bottom of an upside-down heart, the number three, and a turtle.
Tonight, these three things sit heavily beside me. The number three—that’s my family now. An upside-down heart—that’s my family now. And a turtle—that’s me. I don’t know why I think this, but I do. Maybe Jan is right about me hiding in my shell waiting for everything to go back to normal. But there is no normal. Normal is Queen Cassiopeia sitting on her throne, and there’s Mom, sitting in hers. Maybe this is normal. Now, I mean. Maybe this is normal now.
I miss Dad. We’d usually come back from making star maps to find Mom just like this, snoring in her chair by the fire, and I’d go to bed and the two of them would stay up and talk.
I look around the night sky and try to predict if I’ll ever make a star map again. I think if something big shows itself one day, I’ll start again.
I stare at the sky.
Nothing pops out.
I try harder and all I can see is me. Cassiopeia. The turtle, in her shell.
August is the hottest month ever and the log cabin’s window air conditioner isn’t even helping. Jilly and I tried to get Mom to go to the community pool during the week, but instead she took us back to the campground with the good bathrooms.
“You can swim there!” she said. “They have a pond!”
We spent a week camping there during the hottest part of summer. By the time we got home, all Jilly and I wanted to do was wash the pond scum off ourselves and sit on the couch in front of the air conditioner unit and read or watch DVD cartoons we’d already seen.
Mom wasn’t on the phone much anymore. Sometimes she asked me to take Jilly for walks to the stream and gave me a look like she had an important call to make, which I always assumed was to the lawyer who was helping her get divorced from Dad. She never talked about buying a pie and pretending she made it for anyone anymore. I think Lou lowered our rent, so maybe she gave all her pie jokes to Lou.
Jilly and I still hadn’t told her about the woman in Dad’s car or his new stuff.
As the month went on, including two weekends at Dad’s house, it made us feel worse and worse.
On a random Friday afternoon, us watching cartoons in our underwear with the air-conditioning turned as cold as it could go, and Mom in her bedroom next to her air conditioner, writing an article about two new tents we tested that weekend, Mr. Nolan comes to the door. I put a pair of shorts on and Jilly covers her legs with a blanket. Since Mom is upstairs, I answer the door.
He’s nicer than usual and says, “May I speak with your mother, please?” He doesn’t come inside. He waits out there even though it’s 103 degrees.
I get Mom, she goes out, and I hear her offer him to come in and out of the sun but he says he wants to stay outside. I see them talking on the deck and I see Mom’s face drop. Mr. Nolan puts his head in his hands and looks like he’s crying. This is not the Mr. Nolan I know.
They both sit down on the deck furniture, which I know is burning their legs. Mom gets up and comes inside for a pitcher of water and two glasses. I pretend not to be watching the whole thing and I think I’m getting away with it until she says, “Liberty, stay away from the door, please?”
“Is Mr. Nolan okay?”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Are the boys okay? Did something happen?”
“The boys are fine. Don’t worry.”
This is how Mom tells us, an hour later. “I know the Nolan boys haven’t been kind to you since your dad moved out. But I’m asking something of you as a favor to me, okay?”
I have no idea what she’s going to say next. Jilly and I nod and agree to do whatever Mom tells us to do.
“Mrs. Nolan has moved out of the house and isn’t going to come back. I want you to give those boys the kindness they didn’t give you.”
“Why?” Jilly asks.
I put my hand on her arm because I can see she’s about to go off. New/Old Jilly goes off sometimes.
“What if they’re not nice to us?” I ask.
“Then ignore them. You’ve been through it. You know it’s hard,” Mom says.
It’s only August. We’ve only seen Dad six times since January. I didn’t think we’d been through it. I was still going through it.
I stay quiet while Jilly argues. “I don’t see why we have to be nice to them. We just won’t be mean.”
“That’s a good start,” Mom says.
I say, “So … she’s never coming back? Like ever?”
“I don’t know. That’s what Mr. Nolan knows as of now. You know how this stuff goes. It’s complicated,” Mom says.
Jilly thinks on this for a minute. She says, “Is it okay if I’m nice to their face but really I want to punch them?”
“I think that’s fine,” Mom says.
Once we get back in front of the air conditioner and Mom goes back to work in her bedroom, Jilly says, “I feel bad for Patrick, but I don’t.”
“Poor Mr. Nolan. I don’t even think he knows how to cook,” I say.
“Or do laundry. Mrs. Nolan was always hanging out the clothes.”
“Finn told me that Mr. Nolan didn’t let her use the dryer if it was sunny out. Not even in winter,” I say.
Jilly screws up her face. “Well, no wonder she left!”
I can’t tell Jilly that it’s more complicated than that. I can’t tell her that everything is more complicated than what we think. Not just because we’re kids, but because all this marriage and divorce stuff is weird.
One minute Jilly is New Jilly—confident and going off about her opinions—the next she’s in my room, sitting next to the rock, and crying because she misses our old life.
Polaris always points north. It’s one of the only things I can count on. Every night it returns to the sky and does its job.
If people were more like Polaris, maybe things wouldn’t be so complicated.
Dad has us for the weekend of Jilly’s birthday but Jilly says she wants to be with Mom on the actual day, so welcome to the most awkward conversation ever.
Dad is in our kitchen—his old kitchen. Mom is also in our kitchen. She’s making a pitcher of iced tea—the real kind. Jilly is sitting on the bottom step, acting like a girl whose birthday is tomorrow. I’m in the living room sitting crisscross on the floor, facing the kitchen.
Dad says, “Well, I can bring you back on Saturday I guess, and pick you up again after the party?”
“Jilly was hoping you might want to come to her birthday party. Sorry it’s last minute,” Mom says.
“She only told us yesterday,” I say.
Dad thinks. “We can have the party at my house.”
“That’s a good idea,” Mom says.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I say. “Not at all. Not even a little bit.”
Jilly agrees. “Yeah. I want my party to be here.”
“How many people?” Dad asks.
“Just us,” Jilly says.
“No friends?” Dad asks.
“Liberty is my friend,” Jilly says.
“So you want me to be here for your birthday?” Dad asks.
Mom looks nervous. Dad looks like he’s running on a treadmill. Jilly still looks like a girl whose birthday is tomorrow. I don’t know how I look. I’m trying to picture the four of us being here together and doing birthday things and it’s too soon.
It’s just too soon.
Once Mom and Dad agree to throw Jilly a party at our house, we go to Dad’s. More and more decorative things have arrived around his house.
Dad is grilling dinner outside and Jilly says, “I can’t wait to see what I got! I hope I get a hamster.”
“You asked for a hedgehog,” I say.
“Right. So I hope I get a hamster, at least. Or a gerbil. I’m not picky.”
“That’s good,” I say.
“What’d you get me?” she asks.
“If I told you, then I’d ruin the secret.” I got her a book on how to care for a hamster. Mom told me it was a good choice. Jilly is totally getting a hamster.
“Could you guys set the table?” Dad asks from the patio door.
I tell Jilly I’ll do it and go to the kitchen. No lipstick on any glasses this time. But there’s a new mug. It says, WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN RARELY MAKE HISTORY. I push it to the back of the mug shelf and get glasses for dinner, plates, and forks.
He has a new napkin holder that says, WIPE YOUR MOUTH!
Dad doesn’t care about wiping his mouth. But someone else must. And I know it’s a woman.
Jilly wakes me up on her birthday at six thirty in the morning. I was already awake, kinda.
“Happy birthday!” I say. Jilly jumps up and down and then runs to Dad’s room and jumps on his bed.
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Today is the day I get a hedgehog!”
We eat breakfast and Jilly can’t stop talking. Nonstop talking. She talks so much I can’t tell if she’s excited or nervous. It’s her birthday so I think she’s excited. This is a whole new Jilly. Again. She’s just evolving, like everything is normal, while I feel stuck in time, heavy as the rock.
We go to Mom’s house—our house—whatever-I’m-supposed-to-call-it—at noon. Mom has decorated the place with balloons and a big sign that she made that says, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! There are snacks in bowls on the kitchen table. The pitcher of iced tea is out, alongside a pitcher of lemonade, Jilly’s favorite.
“Welcome!” she says, as if this isn’t our house.
Jilly jumps into her arms. Dad stands by the back door. Then Mom welcomes him in, too, puts her arm around him and gives him a squeeze. He smiles. She smiles. My brain forgets for a split second that none of this is real, and I smile because it feels so good to have the four of us back in one place. Back at home.
But then I remember reality.
I blurt out that I have to poop when I don’t really have to, and I jog upstairs to the bathroom. Once I hear Jilly nonstop talking, I sneak out of the bathroom and go to my room.
“This is all so weird,” I say to the rock.
“It sure is.”
“I feel like the gravity is messed up. I’m either floating and don’t feel anything or I’m so heavy I can barely walk.”
“Maybe you should see a doctor,” the rock says.
“I’m not sick.”
“I was kidding.”
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I say.
“I’m you. And you’re funny. Remember?”
“I guess,” I say.
“Liberty! Come down!” Jilly says. “It’s present time!”
“Do it for Jilly,” the rock says.
I go downstairs. Dad is on the red couch with a glass of iced tea. Mom is sitting next to him with a glass of iced tea. They’re holding their iced teas in opposite hands and their other hands are inches away from each other. I stare at their hands. I try, with my mind, to make them hold hands, but it’s not working.
Jilly is jumping around the living room saying all kinds of stuff. “I don’t want you to feel bad if you got me a gerbil because it’s close enough and hedgehogs are certainly cuter, but it’s okay. And Thomas in my class says that his mom and dad accidentally got him a male and a female hamster and they thought they were two females and well, you know what happened then. They had babies. And then Thomas’s mom had to call the pet store and demand that they take the baby hamsters and Thomas was sad because they were so cute! Can you imagine having baby hamsters? So cute.” She stops to breathe. “But I guess you can imagine because you had us and we were cute once, too.”
“Hey,” I say. “I’m still cute.”
“You’re going into middle school,” Jilly says.
“So now I can’t be cute anymore?”
“Not as cute as baby hamsters, no,” Jilly says. And then she says, “Anyway, Thomas’s mom wanted to trade in the male hamster for a female but the store wouldn’t let them so then he had to get another cage, but the hamsters were sad, so he put the two of them together when his mom wasn’t there and you know what happened?”
She’s got this smile. Like she knows she’s telling a good story. Like she knows she’s got the spotlight and it’s her birthday and I guess she’s right. But for me, the spotlight is on Mom and Dad, sitting on the same couch sipping iced tea, almost holding hands.
“They had more babies! So Thomas’s mom had to call the pet store again and that time she wanted the store to pay her for the babies because they were going to sell them anyway, to new people who wanted a hamster.”
Mom and Dad are nodding. I’m still standing here trying to figure out if because I’m going to middle school next week, I’m not cute anymore.
“Let’s do presents!” Mom says. That’s finally what shuts Jilly up.
Jilly sits on the floor and I make my way to the green couch and sit there trying to figure out what comes after cute.
Jilly gets a hamster for her birthday, in a big plastic hamster environment that has tunnels between the rooms. She’s so happy.
Dad says, “We’d have gotten you a hedgehog but they’re illegal in Pennsylvania.”
“I know,” Jilly says.
I laugh. “So you knew they were illegal?”
“Yeah. I just asked anyway. I don’t know. I’m weird!”
We play games. Jilly made a pin-the-tail-on-the-hedgehog poster and we all take turns getting blindfolded and spun and trying to pin the tail. Jilly wins. I think she was peeking out of the blindfold, but it’s her birthday so none of us say anything.
/> She keeps talking nonstop. It’s like Old Jilly turned to New Jilly turned to Newer Jilly, and now it’s New-Improved-Never-Stops-Talking New Jilly. She’s funny again. She’s stopped caring about what people think. I wish I was ten.
At the end of the party, games played, cake eaten, we go back to Dad’s house and nothing feels right. The party turns into a bad idea. First, Jilly had to leave the hamster at Mom’s house. That’s not fair. You can’t give a girl a hamster and then ask her to drive away from it when the party’s over. Second, Mom and Dad hugged each other goodbye. They actually hugged. Dad pecked a little kiss on Mom’s cheek when it was over and Mom said something into his ear, and my brain got all confused.
In the back seat of Dad’s car, on the way back to his house, all I can think about is Mom and Dad getting back together again. Even though it’s not possible. Even though I know it wouldn’t work out, I can’t stop myself from thinking about all the ways it could work out.
I even get excited about it. I can feel inside my body how happy I would be. I almost cry happy tears when I imagine Dad moving back in. I see future camping trips. I see everything.
When we get back to Dad’s, he’s in a great mood. It’s got to be because he loves Mom. Of course they can’t really break up. They just needed a seven-month break, that’s all. Some people do that.
“Clear night,” Dad says.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Feel like a star map?”
I shake my head. “I don’t have my pencils.”
“I have pencils,” Dad says.
“I can’t,” I say. And I start to cry but I go to the bathroom as fast as I can so he doesn’t see. When I come out, I say I’m going outside for a while by myself.
I lie on the grass behind Dad’s town house and look up at the sky.
“If there’s any way you can get my parents back together, please do,” I say. I feel guilty asking. “They don’t hate each other or anything. And Jilly and I really need them.”
The Year We Fell From Space Page 8