Little Universes

by Heather Demetrios

  And boy.

  And wind.

  I leap back through the spacetime continuum. To now. To a boy who watches me, concerned and curious.

  “You’re here,” I say.

  “I am. Got off an hour early for good behavior.” Ben is studying my face very intently. “Is your olfactory bulb messing with your hippocampus and amygdala?”

  I blink.

  Sense memory. He’s talking about sense memory.

  “Yes.”

  “I hate when that happens.”

  My cheek itches, and he reaches out and brushes it with the pads of his fingers. They come away glistening.

  “Oh.” I stare at his skin. Tears. Actual tears.

  That’s eight times.

  “Lacrimal ducts are a bitch,” he says. “I’m taking an anatomy elective right now, so I know words like lacrimal ducts. You impressed?”

  “With you?” I say. “Always.”

  I’ve been his girlfriend less than a week, but it’s very strange because I keep thinking, haven’t we always been together? For years and years?

  “That’s my girl.” He holds up a to-go cup of coffee. “A Castaways restorative. Dirty chai latte, heavy on the dirty. Made it myself. Might not be too hot since it took me ten years to get here after my shift.”

  I reach out, my hand unsteady and a bit slimy with pumpkin. “Thanks.” I take a sip. Spicy and bitter and sweet. “Chai and coffee?”

  He nods. “Good, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He smiles down at me, very messy and sleepy-looking from an opening shift. Coffee stains on his sweatshirt.

  He leans close and tucks back a strand of hair that has slipped from behind my ear. My olfactory bulb is taking notes. “I had a dream about you last night.”

  “You did?”

  “You were on the space station, and we were video chatting—can we do that?”

  “Yes,” I say. “The satellites are pretty good.”

  “Okay, well, you were doing somersaults for me. It was awesome.”

  “Really?” Just the thought—the thought of that reality. I can hardly breathe.

  It feels so far away now. Six more days until my Annapolis interview. I haven’t cancelled it, but I haven’t decided not to cancel it, either.

  Ben nods. “Really. You looked totally at home in zero gravity.” He leans in and presses his lips against mine. “More where that came from,” he murmurs as footsteps in the kitchen get closer.

  “Ah, Ben, you’re here,” Nate says, trooping in. He dumps a new set of knives on the table. “Where’s my coffee?”

  “In Cambridge,” Ben says. “Go get it.”

  “Bastard.” Nate glances at the cup in my hand, eyes narrowed. “So. This. You two. I refused to believe it until I saw it. It’s go for launch, then?”

  “Oh, it’s launched,” Ben says.

  I roll my eyes. “Last Friday, Ben here used quantum mechanics to tell me he was lost without me.” I take a sip of my chai. “What could I do?”

  Nate barks out a laugh. “Heisenberg?” Ben nods. “Nice.”

  My cousin hands me a large metal spoon and gestures to the five-pounder. “Get in there, Mae. I’ve got some serious nerd ass to kick. First prize gets honor, glory, and—most important—two tickets to the first home game between the Sox and the Yankees.”

  My mother’s scent hits the room, so strong I can hardly breathe. A summer rose garden. For just a second I hear her singing along to Joni Mitchell.

  “I thought you science guys were above stupid things like sports,” Hannah drawls.

  My sister floats in, already a ghost. Moondust pale. She doesn’t even need a costume to hand out candy to kids tonight. I try to catch her eye, but it’s like studying the night sky in LA: It’s impossible to get a clear picture when there’s so much stuff between you. Ever since she became a supernova on the kitchen floor, single-handedly smashed the ISS to smithereens, and told me our family was done, she’s been avoiding me even more. Holes up in her room like she’s in quarantine. But her pupils are normal, so she’s sober. This afternoon, anyway.

  “Hey, we may be atheists, but baseball is religion here.” Nate digs into another pumpkin with a knife that would have made Mom nervous.

  There is less breath in me when I hear Mom say, It’s sharp—be careful! My mind is a time capsule. A golden record that reminds me what we were, what was.

  “You know what we call Fenway Park, where the Sox play?” Nate’s saying.

  “A good waste of a Saturday afternoon?” she says.

  Nate stares. “I cannot believe we are related.”

  “The cathedral.” Ben spreads his hands like Gram’s priest standing under the crucifix, but his are slimy with pumpkin bits. “Holiest place on the Eastern Seaboard.”

  Nah groans. “That is ten kinds of wrong.”

  “You, too, huh?” I say.

  He nods. “My family is deeply ashamed that a Brooklyn boy loves the Red Sox. I have your cousin to blame for that.”

  “You’re welcome,” Nate sings, in full Moana mode.

  Ben rolls his eyes and pulls the guts out of the gourd, his fingers tangling with mine. Deliberately.

  I stare at him. He stares back. The force field here is so strong I’m sure we could suck in entire star systems.

  The doorbell rings, and Hannah drifts toward the front of the house. “That’s for me.”

  As soon as Nah’s out of range, Nate leans close, his voice low. “I’m gonna put this in Mae-speak, okay?”

  I nod.

  “She’s out of orbit. Understand?”

  I nod. He’s right. I know.

  When satellites and other objects in space orbit Earth, they’re able to maintain their path through a perfect balance between the object’s inertia and its forward momentum, and the pull of gravity on it. If any of these things is changed, the satellite will either crash down onto what it’s orbiting or spin off into space. The change usually happens if the object collides with something in space—a meteorite, something like that.

  A tsunami.

  Mom, Dad, Micah—they all kept her in orbit. Now she’s spinning.

  “She won’t talk to me.” I throw my hands up, and pumpkin guts fly everywhere. “Flushing her pills only made her hate me more. I need to do something more drastic.”

  Ben’s eyebrows go sky-high. “Pills? Not just booze?”

  I nod. “I didn’t say because—”

  “I understand,” Ben says.

  Nate brushes goo off his hands. “We gotta tell my parents. Have an intervention—”

  His face suddenly turns bland and cheery as he looks over my shoulder, toward the front room.

  Nah’s with the only person I’ve ever seen her talk to at school in the month we’ve been there. The cute guy from her math class who looks like that vampire on TV.

  “This is Drew,” Hannah says.

  Nate, despite wearing a pink top that says Rosé All Day, still somehow manages to present as a very intimidating older brother.

  My cousin pauses, knife held aloft. Drew raises his hands.

  “I come in peace,” he says gravely. His eyes swivel to mine. “Mae. Nice to finally meet you.”

  “Finally?” I say.

  He glances at Nah, but she’s spinning off into some other galaxy, looking at one of the pumpkins with a frown. I wonder if she’s remembering I put a spell on you, Mom using a broom as a mic.

  “Er.” Drew frowns, his hands digging deep into his pockets, like he’s going to find the origins of the universe down there. “Just … heard a lot about you.”

  I grab my chai, take a sip. I thought they weren’t friends. I can’t believe how little I know about my sister’s life now.

  Nate studies him, like Drew’s a plane with a problem. “You go to Saint Francis?”

  He nods. “Senior.”

  “Where are you applying?” Nate asks, which, admittedly, seems like an aggressive question.

  Nah looks over her shoulde
r. “Is this a police interrogation?”

  Drew’s eyes flick to Ben’s MIT sweatshirt. “Not applying anywhere, actually.”

  “Military?” I ask. I’m trying. We could connect on that. He looks like maybe … army? Not intense enough to go marines, but you never know.

  “Mae’s gonna be a naval aviator,” Ben says, smiling at me.

  “So I hear.” Drew’s hands push deeper into his pockets. “That’s really cool.” He hesitates. “I’m afraid you’re oh-for-two on me, though. I’m probably gonna join the union, work on a crew. Like my dad. Or help out at my uncle’s bar.”

  “Which bar?” Nate asks, as though this is going to determine everything.

  “Nolan’s,” he says. “In Dorchester?”

  From the look on Nate’s face, this must be a dodgy bar. But, really, his standards are quite high.

  “Not everyone’s like you guys,” Hannah says, glaring at me.

  “What? I didn’t—what?” I look at her, then at Ben.

  Drew laughs. “It’s cool. I know it’s kind of…” He pulls off his beanie, runs his hand through his hair.

  Hannah comes to his side and loops her arm through his. A surprised smile flits across his face.

  “Let’s leave the brainiacs to the pumpkin carving,” Nah says. “It’s going to turn into this whole engineering project and—”

  My phone rings, and I don’t hear the rest of what she says, because when I turn to look at the screen, I see it’s an unknown number.

  Ben notices. Grins. “Think it’s Annapolis?”

  “I don’t know why it would be—but I better take it, just in case.”

  Nate throws me a towel and I get as much goo off my hands as I can, then grab the phone.

  I turn away, into the kitchen.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, yes, I’d like to speak with Mae Winters?”

  “This is she,” I say.

  That’s how Mom answered phones, and I always thought it sounded very professional.

  “Hello, Mae.” There’s a pause. “This is Marilyn Cole from the Red Cross.”

  All sound fades. There is just the pounding of blood in my ears. The ocean in my body. Surging. A wave. The wave. In me.

  “Miss Winters?”

  “Yes. Yes?”

  Someone touches my elbow. Ben. He looks down at me, concerned. Perhaps I am not hiding the panic in my voice very well.

  “I see here that you’re still a minor and that your guardian is … Nora Russo—your aunt, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Nate is there now, saying something to me, but I wave him off.

  “Would it be possible for me to speak with her?”

  “Anything you have to say, you can say to me.”

  There’s a pause.

  “I’d really prefer if there was an adult present.”

  I look at Nate. “My cousin’s here. He’s an adult. Is that okay?”

  “All right. Can I speak with him?”

  Now Nah is in the doorway, the guy—Drew—just behind her.

  I hold the phone out to Nate.

  “It’s the Red Cross. They want to speak to an adult. I don’t know why they won’t just let me—”

  He takes the phone. “Hello? Yes. Yes, I am. I understand.”

  I watch my cousin’s face as they talk. It goes from concern to a collage of hurt.

  “Hold—can you hold on a moment? Thank you.”

  I grip Nate’s arm. “Did they find them? Did they?”

  Nah walks farther into the kitchen. Stands on the spot she’d been lying in a few weeks ago. A pool of bourbon. Grief whiskey. “What? Who is that?”

  “It’s about your mom,” Nate says.

  “They found her,” Nah breathes.

  Nate’s eyes flick to mine. He nods.

  “Dad?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  I hold out my hand and he puts the phone in it. The woman talks to me. I hear mass grave. That’s all I hear. Nate takes the phone from me when I lower it. The woman is still talking. The word sanitation flows into the kitchen.

  Hannah looks at me. Mom’s face and hair and smile. She is Mom incarnate, and it hurts so much to look at her.

  “A … mass…” I take a breath. “She was in a mass grave.”

  Hannah crumples, and Drew holds her up, gets her to the couch in the living room.

  The only mass grave I ever saw was in a history book. Of the Shoah. Jews, in Dachau. My mom was in something like that. A body that had DNA samples collected from it by people in HAZMAT suits, maybe, then was tagged for later identification before being placed in a black or orange or white body bag.

  Is she still in the bag?

  I know she’s gone, but I keep thinking how hard it will be for her to breathe in there.

  Ben’s arms go around me, and I hide in him. I want to stay here forever, in this place of coffee and wind.

  “I don’t know why I’m feeling so…” I push my forehead into his chest. “I thought—I’d hoped she’d just floated on the sea. With him. And he’s … Where is he?”

  I knew it wasn’t possible, wasn’t likely, that they would be together. But knowing they weren’t … I suppose I had engaged in magical thinking. Or a suspension of disbelief. If you don’t know for certain, you can imagine the best outcome of the worst situation.

  I look up at Ben. “I didn’t let myself imagine them dying. I wouldn’t. And now—my mind won’t stop. They weren’t together, Ben. They died alone.”

  He rests his forehead against mine. He doesn’t say anything, but he is like the rocks he studies, so solid and warm.

  The garage door shudders, then the back door opens and Aunt Nora comes in with grocery bags. Uncle Tony is behind her. They stop talking. They stare at us.

  Nate hangs up the phone. “They found Aunt Lila,” he says, so soft, so gentle.

  But still, Aunt Nora drops her groceries and the eggs break.

  There’s crying.

  She is pulling me to her.

  Later—I don’t know when; I have lost the ability to organize time or anything, but at some point, Ben materializes from a corner, says something to Nate, crosses to me.

  “Mae. Should I go? I don’t want to intrude. Whatever you need—”

  I slide my arms around Ben’s waist and rest my cheek against his chest. His arms immediately come around me. Oxytocin and vasopressin.

  “Don’t go,” I whisper.

  “I think those might be my favorite words now,” he says.

  Mom would have liked him. So much. She would have figured out what his favorite soup was and then would have devised an elaborate explanation about what this said about him.

  “What’s your favorite soup, Ben?”

  “I’ve always been partial to Italian wedding.”

  I go still. Dad’s favorite. I look up toward the ceiling, even though that is not at all where my mother is because she is nowhere, not even in a body bag in Malaysia.

  Did you hear that? I want to say.

  When the space shuttle Columbia exploded in 2003, I was only three years old. Just out of foster care, a brand-new member of the Winters family. I don’t remember Columbia, though I’m sure Dad, in a rare moment for him, had the TV on nonstop, watching the coverage. Seven astronauts died when the shuttle exploded on reentry into the atmosphere. The whole apparatus disintegrated, the pieces scattered over two states. The remains of the crew were found in the nose of the shuttle.

  It’s good to find them. Even if they are gone. I’m beginning to realize this now.

  When an astronaut signs up for a mission, she knows she can die. It’s a dangerous job, to say the least, and any number of things can go wrong. The Columbia wasn’t the first disaster in the field of space exploration, and it won’t be the last. This is the price we pay to know where we came from, how the universe works, and where we’re going.

  When you’re up there and it’s no longer a sim, but a real-life bad news disaster, you
do everything you can to science the shit out of your situation. To stay alive. You don’t give up.

  But if you’re an astronaut on the ground, supporting the crew, there’s only so much you can do. You work with the data you’ve got. You do everything you can to stay in touch with the crew, to give them whatever support you can. But in the end, they’re the ones up there dealing with that rocket, that atmosphere, that universe that is hostile to life. They’re in the suit.

  They say that mission control messed up with Columbia. That the Atlantis shuttle was ready to launch, and could have potentially saved the Columbia crew. Maybe. In the end, the astronauts lost consciousness. The restraints didn’t work on reentry, so their little bodies were being thrown around, bludgeoned by the capsule. The shuttle went into a flat spin and some of them died of asphyxiation before they could get their helmets on. A terrible way to go.

  Like drowning.

  You’d think mission control would be in complete chaos, right? Phones ringing, data shooting out of computers like lasers, people running around and barking commands. But it’s really quiet. I’ve seen the footage online. Columbia’s reentry and landing CAPCOM, Charlie Hobaugh—their point person on the ground, like Ed Harris in Apollo 13—he’s so calm. As an astronaut himself, he knew that panic is the last thing the crew needed. You can hear him trying to talk to the pilot, Rick D. Husband—“Columbia, Houston, comm check”—even though the radio transmission had long since burned up. He kept trying. And on the video, you see the moment, the moment when he knows. He covers his eyes with a hand. Takes a breath.

  And then issues the next command.

  Send out the ground crew. The rescue crew. But everyone knows it’s not to save the astronauts. It’s to take care of what’s left of them.

  One detail that has always stayed with me about the Columbia tragedy, beyond the horror of that moment when those astronauts knew something was wrong and that they were never going to stand on Earth again, is this: In the shuttle, there was a copy of a drawing that had been done by a boy, Petr Ginz, while he was in the Terezín concentration camp—an image of what Earth would look like while standing on the surface of the moon. It’s a charcoal sketch, or maybe pencil, with lots of spiky rock in the foreground and Earth floating beyond. The boy who drew that knew death was close. Maybe just around the corner. But he kept looking up. To that light.