The Dream Life of Astronauts

by Patrick Ryan

  “We’re barely even moving, Mom. Would you like to stop for a while and rest?”

  “I’m not doing anything. Why would I need to rest?”

  “Listen, about your ring. Who’s this Mr. Hollingsworth? I don’t know what kind of person would think it’s okay to do that, but you can’t just take someone’s jewelry and give them a—snack.”

  “Weetabix,” she said. “British Weetabix.”

  “But you gave him your wedding ring. It’s valuable.”

  “Probably not, knowing your father.”

  “Sentimental value, then,” Martin said. “It has that, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose.” She wanted to change the subject. More and more, she found that interacting with anyone made her want to change the subject. “Who cares? Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  She could still surprise him, now and then, by paying attention. He did want to talk to her about something; he just wanted to get her someplace private first because he knew that no matter how gently or diplomatically he phrased his news, she was going to react poorly.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked. “Do you want to go to the cafeteria?” The cafeteria was sometimes empty between mealtimes.

  “God, no.”

  “What about outside? It’s not so hot today. It’s nice, actually.”

  “Why are you so eager to get somewhere?”

  “So we can talk,” he said.

  This didn’t bode well, she decided. Martin wasn’t usually crafty, or particular. Under normal circumstances, he was as clear and simple as a glass of water. He had something up his sleeve. “Come around here,” she said. “Come around so I can see you.”

  She felt the chair stop moving. Then he was squatting down in front of her, his knees crackling. She was relieved to see that he didn’t have a crazed, Richard Widmark glint in his eye. It was this godawful chair that was getting her so rattled. Unless you were Franklin Roosevelt, it was impossible to stand your ground in an argument when you were sitting on wheels.

  She had to remind herself that they weren’t arguing. But he looked so somber, her Martin, such a little doughface. “There’s my little man,” she said, wanting nothing more than to see him smile.

  He did smile a little. He even leaned forward and gently hugged her—something he usually did only at the end of his visits. Things were sliding back into Ellie’s favor. Her throat, which had been fluttering just moments ago, was now regaining its grip. Her nostrils flared as she caught the scent of something disagreeable—the wallpaper, maybe, or the glue behind it. But all of this was going to be fine.

  —

  The atrium was a compromise, since Ellie refused to go outside. Located in the center of Serenity Palms, it had, until just a year ago, been a proper atrium: open-air, exposed to the elements, with a pond in the middle where koi and goldfish swam. But the fish couldn’t keep up with the mosquitoes, and the summer storms scattered the mulch over the walkway—little sticks that might catch on slippered feet—so the atrium had been enclosed with a peaked skylight. The bugs were gone now and the walkway was clear, but the air was no different than in any other part of the building and hummed with the compressor of a hidden air conditioner. Also hidden were a set of speakers that dripped music—sometimes piano, today violin. The fish had been removed. The pond had been filled in with cement and was now a sitting area.

  Martin put the brake on Ellie’s wheelchair. He pulled out one of the patio chairs and sat down across from her.

  “It’s like the great outdoors without having to be there,” he said.

  “I liked it better when it was open.”

  “You never wanted to come in here before. The smells, and noise from the highway, remember?”

  “Now it smells worse.”

  “But there’s music. You like music.”

  She looked down at her lap and smoothed the fabric of her robe with both hands. “You don’t need to tell me that,” she said. “I know I like music. I used to teach music. I just don’t think Vivaldi should get as much attention as he does. He’s not serious enough, flits around too much. If Charlie Chaplin had had violins for eyebrows, they’d have played Vivaldi.”

  Fair enough, Martin thought.

  “And you look spotty,” she added, as if these topics were at all related. “When’s the last time you saw a dermatologist? Some of those marks on your forehead could be cancerous.”

  “Do you like it here?” he asked.

  Possibly a trick question. She glanced at the ficus trees, the bamboo, the Mexican fans.

  “Not the atrium,” he said. “The facility. The home.”

  “It’s okay. There’s a lot wrong with it.”

  “But you like it better than the other two homes, right? I mean, you seem at least a little happier here than you were at Garden View or East Haven.”

  “That’s what you wanted to talk about?”

  “I’m just asking,” he said. “Just checking in.”

  “Do you want to take my temperature, too?”

  “No.”

  “What is it? You’re acting so strange today. Why did you even bother to come?”

  It occurred to them both that she was getting ahead of herself. She usually saved this particular zinger for just when he was about to leave.

  He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees. The whites of his eyes looked pink all of a sudden. “I came because I love you, okay? And because I wanted to see you.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. “Go on.”

  “And there’s something I need to tell you. The fact is—” He sucked in a shot of air through his nose. “I’ve gotten really tired of being alone all the time.”

  “Me, too!” she said with more spark than she’d intended. “I’ve been alone my whole life.”

  “No, you haven’t. And neither have I. But I’ve been on my own since Claire died, and that was eleven years ago.”

  “Bob Hope’s been gone for eleven years?”

  “Who—would you just listen, please? For once?”

  All she did was listen. All she did was get talked to. She pressed her lips together and widened her eyes at him.

  “I had a great life with Claire. We were married for twenty-eight years, and we shared something that’s always going to be special to me. I know the two of you never got along, but there was nothing I could do about that—”

  “Stubborn,” Ellie slipped in. “She was stubborn.” Then pressed her lips back together.

  “—and she always told me she wanted me to move on. So the fact is, I’ve met someone.” He paused for a moment to let this sink in, but nothing changed in his mother’s expression. “Her name is Beth. She’s a landscaper—she’s retired now, but she still grows orchids and takes them to shows. We’ve been doing that together for a while. We’re serious, Mom.” He cleared his throat. “We actually got married six months ago.”

  One of the doors to the atrium—the front or the back, Ellie couldn’t tell which—swung open and then hissed shut on its slow-moving hinges. No one appeared, though. “That’s what you wanted to tell me?” There was an opportunity here, she just wasn’t sure what it was. Martin had had a toy when he was little, a Volkswagen car that had flashing lights and a mechanism inside that made it back up whenever it ran into something, back up and redirect, over and over, until it was turned off. Her thoughts felt like that sometimes. They felt like that now. Back up, redirect. “Does this person have children?”

  “Beth. She does. She has a son and a daughter. And her daughter has a daughter. Which makes me sort of a grandfather.”

  “Why didn’t you ever have children? You and Claire, I mean.”

  “We didn’t want any.” Martin had always been indifferent about becoming a parent and had left the decision up to Claire, and when she’d waffled on the idea until she was too old to have kids, he’d been relieved.

  “It would have been nice to have a grandchild,” Ellie said. “A little Martin Jr. to toss around
.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “I guess I don’t see what the point is, then. When do I get to meet this—” The name was gone from her head.

  “Beth,” Martin said.

  “When do I get to meet her?”

  “Well, that’s just it. I don’t think it’s going to happen, Mom. Like I said, I’ve been married for six months, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to introduce the two of you—or even tell you about her. And I finally decided there was a reason for that. A good reason.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” she asked. “Of course I’m going to meet her.”

  “I don’t think so,” Martin said. For all the mental preparation he’d undergone, his hands were shaking. He locked his fingers together to steady them.

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t have to go into that.”

  “We most certainly do. She’s your wife, for godsake. I’m your mother.”

  “And you were horrible to my first wife. You were horrible to Claire from day one, and right up to the end. Horrible.”

  “I was not. I was not. Don’t you come here and rewrite history. Not while I’m still around to keep the record straight. I was not.”

  “You were,” he said, eyes still pink but his voice calm.

  “Oh, this just takes the cake!” Ellie said. “You’re as stubborn as she was! I’ve never heard of such a thing in my life.”

  “Do you remember,” Martin said, the moment so alive in his head that it might just have happened an hour ago—and, oh, how he’d longed to throw this back in her face for so many years, and how he’d sworn to himself that he never would because the past belonged in the past. Well, the ugly truth was that there was no real divide between the past and the present. The present couldn’t be ignored, and the past never went away. They were like twins joined at the hip. “Do you remember when Claire was in the middle of chemo and radiation, the first time she was really sick, and you wanted to come stay with us and help out?”

  “Of course.”

  “And I came to Garden View and got you and brought you back to the house, and you did nothing but complain? About how messy the place was, and how bad my cooking was, and how preoccupied I was?”

  The house was a mess; she remembered that clearly. But she redirected her thoughts and said, “I was sad. It was a sad time—for all of us.”

  “It was. And you stood there in the hallway, asking what time we were going to eat dinner and saying you hoped it was better than what we had last night. I was helping Claire get dressed for her appointment, and you were complaining about the food.”

  “I was sad!” she said again. “It was a sad time! Your wife was dying!”

  “She wasn’t dying at that point. She was undergoing treatment. For all we knew, she was going to beat it and live another twenty years. But, yes, it was a really sad time.”

  He was going to cry, she thought. She wished he would cry. Comforting him would be easier than listening to him.

  “I said, ‘Mom, I’m not thinking about dinner right now.’ And do you remember what you said back?”

  “It was so long ago,” she said. “I’m tired, Martin. I want to go to my room.”

  “You pointed at Claire, my wife, and you said to me, ‘Of course you’re not thinking about dinner, because all you care about is that.’ ”

  She should have been keeping a ledger this whole time. From day one of getting pregnant, the diapers, the spitting up, the scabbed knees, all the work she’d done to keep him alive and safe—only to have him zero in on one thing she’d said, one thing he claimed she’d said, which she had no memory of saying whatsoever. She should have kept a ledger.

  He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped it under his nose.

  “Why even tell me, then?” she asked. “Why tell me you’ve married this person, if you don’t want me to meet her?”

  He wagged his head a little. “I don’t know. I guess so I could tell you I was happy.”

  “Oh,” she said. “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Well, good for you!” she said, raising her voice, nearly shouting. “Martin is happy, hip hip hooray!”

  Birds would have taken flight, if there’d been birds. Heads would have turned. But they were alone.

  He wheeled her back to her room.

  —

  The Italian was sleeping. The magazines and the rounded scissors lay on her lap.

  Martin brought the wheelchair up alongside the recliner, put its brake on, stood in front of Ellie and held out his hands. Ellie raised her own hands and held on to him as he lifted her and carefully moved her back into the recliner. He asked her if she needed anything.

  “Some water,” she said.

  He took a cup from the shelf next to her nightstand, filled it at the sink, and brought it to her. She drank down half of it and set it in the cup holder built into the recliner’s arm. For a moment he just stood next to her, and fearing he might want to resume their conversation, fearing the conversation itself, she looked out the window and pointed and said, “What is that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “That tiny man with the parachute. Out over the water. He goes up and down, up and down, like he can’t make up his mind. What’s he doing?”

  Martin followed to where she was pointing. “Parasailing,” he said. Then he bent down and kissed her cheek.

  He stopped at the front desk on his way out and asked the woman there if she knew a Mr. Hollingsworth. She did; she said he was a resident. “This might sound crazy,” Martin said, “but is it possible he’s traded some biscuits for my mother’s wedding ring?”

  She smiled. “Mr. Hollingsworth gives her the biscuits, and she gives him her ring even though he doesn’t want it. So he brings it to us. It’s happened several times.” She reached over to a table beside her desk and found an envelope with his mother’s name written on it. She held it out for him.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I’m on my way out. Would you mind giving it to her?”

  “I’ll make sure she gets it,” the woman said.

  He thanked her and walked through the automatic doors into the warm afternoon.

  The sun beat down on the back of his neck and his forehead as he crossed the parking lot. For just a moment, he imagined he could smell the stucco and the terra-cotta radiating off the building. She was right about the dermatologist, of course; he would have to make an appointment soon. She was right to question why he’d told her about Beth. She was maybe even right to trade her wedding ring for a box of biscuits, if the ring was always going to be returned. But he was done, he decided. And if it confused her, wondering where he’d gone, even if it hurt her terribly—well, it could only hurt for so long.

  To David McConnell

  My love and endless gratitude to Fred Blair. Thank you for every moment of this ongoing journey.

  Thank you to my editor, Noah Eaker, who is as brilliant as he is kind and who kept at me until I got it closer to right. Thank you to Susan Kamil and Lisa Bankoff for their patience, faith, and devotion.

  Thank you to the people (all of them dear friends and fellow writers) who read early drafts of these stories and gave me sharp and insightful feedback: Michael Carroll, Sophia Efthimiatou, John Freeman, Laura Martineau, David McConnell, Keith McDermott, and Bob Smith.

  Thank you also to the people who have rallied behind me in more ways than I can count: Nicole Aragi, Nina Arazoza, Maribeth Batcha, Denver Butson, Richard Canning, Lila Cecil, Donnie Conner, Darrell Crawford, Amanda Faraone, Rhonda Keyser, Joy Parisi, Kevin Pinzone, Steve Quester, Anna Schachner, Chris Shirley, Adina Talve-Goodman, Hannah Tinti, Dean Van de Motter, and Don Weise.

  Thank you to Ann Patchett for her life-changing friendship and for seeing something in me that I didn’t know was there.

  Thank you to Edmund White—the hero who became the mentor and loving, guiding presence.

  Thank you to my t
eachers: Sandra McInerney, JoAnn Gardner, Sheila Ortiz Taylor, Robert Early, and—gone but still resonating—Jerome Stern.

  And thank you to Beverly Neel, Elizabeth Bles-Webber, Steven Webber, James and Debbie Bles, Patricia Ryan Green, my nieces and nephews, and Fred for teaching me what home is.

  BY PATRICK RYAN

  The Dream Life of Astronauts

  Send Me

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PATRICK RYAN is the author of the novel Send Me, as well as three novels for young adult readers. His stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Tin House, One Story, Crazyhorse, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction. He lives in New York City.

  patrickryanbooks.com

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