The Dream Life of Astronauts

by Patrick Ryan

  But she was starting to like the bird man. He had pretty blue eyes and he seemed smart, even if it was about things like talking to rats and playing Jenga on another planet. She could no longer imagine stealing Mrs. Kerrigan’s food and sneaking off to Paris alone, because the food would have also belonged to the bird man and she would never steal from him.

  When the phone rang and Mrs. Kerrigan went into the kitchen to get it, the bird man asked Becca if she wanted to lie down with him on the living room floor.

  “I’m too old for naps,” she told him.

  “Not to take a nap. To look up.”

  They could look up from where they were sitting, but she didn’t say this; she walked into the living room and spread flat out beside him on the carpet between the coffee table and the television.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “The ceiling. What do you see?”

  “It depends on the time of day. Right now, I see a ship breaking through particle clouds. Sometimes I see seahorses pulling giant ice statues on sleds.”

  She understood then that he was talking about the swirls in the plaster—the same way you could look at a cloud and see a face or an animal. She let her hand flop sideways until her fingers brushed his. “If I go to Paris,” she said, “do you want to come with me?”

  “I’ve got stuff to do.”

  “Well, maybe we could go to that place you were talking about.”

  He made a little humming sound that may have been a yes but may have just been a hum.

  “That planet,” she said, in case he didn’t understand. “We could go there together and get away from all these crappy people. We could leave and never have to see any of them again.”

  Done with her phone call, Mrs. Kerrigan leaned into the pass-through. “You know what?” she said. “I don’t think we need to hear any more about other planets today, or about rats, or about how crappy everyone is. I told your grandmother we were going to have fun, Becca, and we’re going to do it. Did you bring anything fun in your bag?”

  “She brought Safari Suzie,” the bird man said. “And Safari Steve.” How he knew this, Becca had no idea. He’d looked in the bag, maybe. Or had X-ray vision.

  “Well, then, let’s have a safari,” Mrs. Kerrigan said. “Chop-chop. No arguments.”

  They followed her out to the backyard, where she chose a spot near the cumquat tree, plopped down with her legs folded beneath her, and upended the bag. The bird man squatted on his knees and began picking through the miniature equipment, while Becca sat Indian-style and tried not to sneer. All she wanted was to be alone with the bird man. All she wanted was to be lying next to him, holding hands, the two of them talking about how they might run away together. But that wasn’t going to happen with this horse-haired woman insisting they play with dolls.

  Mrs. Kerrigan handed Safari Suzie to her. She tried to hand Safari Steve to the bird man, but he said he’d rather be the elephant with the double saddle strapped to its back. “I guess I’ll be Steve,” Mrs. Kerrigan said.

  They pretended to ride the elephant around, Mrs. Kerrigan holding Steve at the reins and Becca rolling her eyes as she wagged the Suzie doll nearby. After they’d done this for a while, Mrs. Kerrigan suggested they dismount and set up camp. She unfastened the tent, which sprang into shape, and laid out the pots and pans, the little ice cooler, the shotgun no bigger than a pretzel stick. The bird man used the elephant’s head to butt the tent away from the plastic fire, and he used the elephant’s trunk to pound pretend stakes into the ground, even though the tent didn’t need any stakes.

  Becca made Suzie pace back and forth listlessly on the grass.

  Noticing this, Mrs. Kerrigan walked Steve over to Suzie, raised the doll’s unbendable arm so that his hand rested on Suzie’s shoulder, and said in a voice much deeper than her own, “You look preoccupied, darling. What’s troubling you?”

  It was all too retarded. Becca opened her mouth to say so, but changed her mind at the last second. “My grandma’s having sex with that driving school man.”

  “Uh-oh,” the bird man said.

  Mrs. Kerrigan’s grip went slack, causing Steve to tilt to one side. “Do you even know what that means?” she asked Becca.

  “There’s a thing, and a hole, and the thing goes in the hole—”

  “Never mind! I know you’re going through a hard time right now, Becca. I think maybe you’re angry at your parents for not staying together, and you’re angry at your mother for traveling so much.”

  “She’s not traveling. She moved to California.”

  “Okay, then you’re angry at her for moving to California. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to take it out on your grandmother.”

  “I can’t stand that witch,” Becca said. “She smells like hairspray and she farts.”

  “Your grandmother is a good friend of mine, and I happen to know she’s doing the best she can.”

  “She doesn’t even like you,” Becca said. “She told me you’re lonely. And sad.”

  Mrs. Kerrigan’s chin quivered for a moment. “Well, I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “What I do know is that life can be very difficult sometimes, and it can seem like it’s not going to change, but believe me, things change. And one day—”

  “Oh, look,” Becca said. She lifted her doll and held it horizontally a foot off the ground. “Suzie’s dead.”

  Mrs. Kerrigan blinked. “No, she’s not.”

  “She is.” Becca opened her hand and let the doll drop. “She’s dead.”

  Mrs. Kerrigan reached for Suzie, but Becca snatched the doll back up, held it by its legs, and whacked its head against the ground several times.

  The bird man looked fascinated. Mrs. Kerrigan looked shocked—until her eyes narrowed with what was probably annoyance. A breeze stirred the air and delivered something tiny and winged into Becca’s ear, where it buzzed with a furious noise. She wanted to reach up and brush it away but felt unable to move.

  “I might have left the stove on,” Mrs. Kerrigan said. She set Safari Steve down next to the tent, stood, and dusted her hands together. “I think I’ll go check.”

  The insect finally backed its way out of Becca’s ear as Mrs. Kerrigan walked into the house. Becca smiled at the bird man, thinking, if only he’d smile back. If only he’d tell her more about the planet with the blue trees and the Circus Peanut sky. She would listen to every word, if it meant the two of them could be friends.

  And then, miraculously, he did smile. Not an over-the-top, I-love-you smile, but a jumpy-sad smile that made her want to hug him. “Should we have a funeral?” he asked.

  “A what?”

  “A manifestation of the human need to pay respects to the deceased.”

  “Okay,” she said with a little shrug, unsure if he was being serious but wanting to go along. “And you can show me your moon rock, if you want. And then can we go to that planet you were telling me about? To”—she racked her brain for the words he’d used—“colonize the outer territories? For the species exchange?” Of course they weren’t going to travel to another planet any more than they were going to talk to rats, but she ached for him to like her.

  “I don’t think so,” he said calmly.

  “Why not?”

  “They don’t take just anybody,” he said, looking somehow both regretful and satisfied at the same time. “They’re very particular.”

  “Because there’s not enough room? Or food? I don’t eat much.”

  “No, there’s plenty of room and all the food you could want. The Delfarians are just—particular. So, should we pray? Or was Suzie an atheist?”

  —

  The room Billy got for them was at the back of the inn, across from a small, kidney-shaped pool blanketed with pine needles. He took an overnight bag from his trunk. When he opened the door to the room, a smell not unlike boiled meat wafted across Gail’s nose. She stepped inside, set her purse on a table, and for lack of anything else to do, started walking around the
room, turning on lights.

  He stepped behind her and turned them all off again, except for the standing pole lamp next to the door. Still holding the overnight bag, he sat down on the edge of the bed and patted a hand against the bedspread. She sat down less than a foot away from him. He had the beginnings of a bald spot, she noticed; his hair looked carefully arranged to hide it. But she hadn’t appreciated before what nice ears he had or how prominent his Adam’s apple was, rising and falling like a knuckle behind the skin of his throat.

  “You strike me as an adventurous person,” he said.

  “So do you.”

  “Do you like to pretend?”

  “I love it. More than anything else.”

  “Why don’t you lie back and relax while I change into something more interesting?”

  She was about as relaxed as she was going to get, given the circumstances, but she agreed. He carried the overnight bag into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

  Somewhere down the row of rooms, one of the outer doors slammed and she felt it in her ribs. Dear Christ, she thought, don’t let him come out of there dressed like some kind of animal. Don’t let him hop around the room with bunny ears on his head, wanting me to feed him carrots. I’d rather die. She slipped off her shoes and set them in front of the nightstand. She considered taking off her dress and hanging it on one of the coat hangers across from the bathroom, but she didn’t want to be caught hastening back to the bed in just her bra and panties, which might have looked presumptuous.

  When he stepped out of the bathroom several minutes later, he was dressed as—well, she wasn’t sure what. His shorts and his shirt were the color of split pea soup. So were the socks that were pulled up to his knees. He was dressed as a pea, maybe. Except that peas didn’t wear bright red, white, and blue scarves around their necks.

  “How do I look?”

  “Attractive,” she said. “Are you some kind of vegetable?”

  “I’m an Eagle Scout,” he said. “This is my old uniform.”

  “What does that make me?”

  “My hooker?”

  That he’d asked this rather than assigned her the role suggested enough respect to tip her into going with it. “All right. We can pretend that.”

  “And I’m only sixteen,” he said. “I don’t have more than my allowance to spend.”

  “That’s okay. Am I expensive?”

  “No.”

  “What’s my name?”

  “I have no idea. Touch the front of my shorts.”

  He crossed the room and stood next to the bed, his hands hanging down at his sides. She reached over and slipped her fingers around his fly, searching for the tab of his zipper.

  “Don’t take it out,” he said. “Just rub it.”

  She moved her palm back and forth over the pea-colored fabric.

  “Tell me about you,” he said.

  “I’m retired. I used to work in bookkeeping at Montgomery Ward.”

  “No, tell me about you.”

  “Oh! I’m a”—she couldn’t bring herself to say hooker—“a lady of the evening.”

  “Have you always been one?”

  For all she knew, he wanted her to have been a nun just previous to this. “I’m not sure.”

  “You have,” he said.

  “Yes, I have.”

  “For how long?”

  “Forever and a day,” she said. He grunted, and she kept rubbing.

  “So all you do is turn tricks for money?”

  “I suppose so. By definition.”

  “Say it.”

  Her eyes were beginning to sting. “All I do is turn tricks,” she said.

  “Like a hooker.”

  The logistics of this were confusing. Was she like a hooker, or was she a hooker? “Wouldn’t you rather get undressed? Both of us, I mean.”

  “Trick-turner,” he said. “You’ve never even had a respectable lay.”

  “Well, that’s just not true, Billy. I know we’re playing, here, but I don’t want you really believing that. I’ve had lots of boyfriends. And three husbands.”

  He grunted again, then shuddered.

  She felt a dampness on her palm. When she brought her hand away, there was a dark stain the size of a dime on the front of his shorts.

  “Three times I’ve been to the altar,” she said, turning away. “And they were nice men. I wouldn’t have married them otherwise.”

  —

  As she pulled up in front of Mrs. Kerrigan’s house, the person looking back at her in the rearview mirror could have been about to walk into a cotillion. Perfect hair, perfect makeup. Her lipstick wasn’t even smudged—and why would it be? She and Billy hadn’t kissed. He hadn’t even touched her. She’d washed her hands three times at The Juniper Inn and had to shake them dry because there weren’t any towels.

  Mrs. Kerrigan was smiling as she opened the front door. “How was your afternoon?” she asked.

  “Lovely,” Gail said. “It really and truly was! I hope Becca wasn’t too much trouble.”

  “She was an angel,” Mrs. Kerrigan said. “Weren’t you, Becca?”

  Grocery bag in hand, Becca was already stepping around Mrs. Kerrigan and moving past Gail.

  Mrs. Kerrigan’s withered son jumped up from the sofa and came to stand beside his mother in the doorway. “Don’t forget about the star charts,” he called after Becca. “And the Doppler trajectories!”

  “What in the world?” Gail asked.

  “I was showing her how to make reverse maps of the galaxy, and how the Doppler effect can predict wormholes.”

  “My, my.” She looked down and saw that Becca was already off the porch and halfway across the lawn. “Hello? Rudeness? Get back here and say thank you to the Kerrigans!”

  But the girl long-strided to the car, where she opened the passenger door and flung the grocery bag into the backseat with such force that it smacked against the opposite window. She climbed in after it.

  “That is not my car, so please don’t ruin it,” Gail called out. She thanked the Kerrigans on Becca’s behalf, then thanked them again as she stepped back from their doorway, and they both nodded and smiled at her like they would at an earnest but bothersome solicitor. Mrs. Kerrigan eased the door closed.

  How, would someone please explain to Gail, had this become her life? What series of events had been so unavoidable that not one single thing could have been turned in her favor along the way? Two years wasted on a high school sweetheart who never bothered to tell her he had to marry Orthodox. A year wasted at college before her father started losing his mind and her mother insisted she move back home to help take care of him. Six months in Miami at the Barbizon School of Modeling, and not a shred of work to come of it. Three failed marriages, one suicide, thirty unwanted pounds, a daughter who’d told her to go to hell in their last conversation. Well, bring it on, brother; she could take it. But did all those rotten twists in the road have to lead her to a place where she spent eighty dollars at the hairdresser’s just to lie in a motel room with no towels and masturbate an overgrown Boy Scout?

  On the way home, as she aligned the left side of the car with the center line and counted two seconds’ worth of distance between her and the car in front of her, she wondered what the chances were that she might have earned, at this point, one Holy Grail of a candy bar without having to suffer any backtalk. Becca, she saw in the rearview mirror, sat silently chewing in the backseat. “I wasn’t late, so don’t tell me I was,” Gail said. “I see you’ve found the Fruit Roll-Ups I bought you.”

  No response.

  “A person should thank people who are nice to them,” Gail said. “I don’t know what gets into your head sometimes, but if you don’t start thanking people like the Kerrigans when they’re nice to you, you’re going to run out of—”

  “They aren’t nice!” Becca all but shouted through a mouthful of candy.

  Gail saw that the girl’s cheeks had gone red and her eyes were glistening. “What are you ta
lking about?”

  “The bird man pretended to like me and said he was going off to some other planet, then told me I couldn’t go with him! I didn’t even want to go with him, it was just stupid, made-up stuff, but he didn’t have to be so mean about it! And that horse-head woman is crazy!”

  Gail didn’t need this on her plate, not after the day she’d had. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” she said.

  Becca was practically hyperventilating in the rearview mirror. “They made me bury my Suzie doll!” she hollered. “It’s still in their backyard! You’re always telling me to say thank you, but why should I thank anybody? For anything? Everyone’s awful!”

  Gail brought her foot down on the brake and yanked the steering wheel, throwing gravel as she brought the car to a stop along the shoulder. In one semifluid motion, she got out, folded the seat forward, reached for Becca, and dragged her from the car.

  Becca’s legs went limp. If not for Gail’s hold on her arm, the girl would have sprawled out flat. Gail gripped both her shoulders and shook her hard enough to make a piece of Fruit Roll-Up fall out of her mouth. “What did you say?” she asked. “What did you say to me?”

  With less volume and a slight tremble in her voice, Becca said again, “Everyone’s awful.”

  Oh, I hate you, Gail wanted to tell her. All the work I’ve done, everything I’ve tried to make right, and this is how you act? I hate you.

  But in the next moment, she didn’t. There was a line of spittle running sideways across Becca’s cheek, a look of horror on her face. Gail’s breath caught in her throat and her eyes spilled over with tears. “My only babe. My sweet lover!” she gasped, pulling Becca against her. “You’re absolutely right!”