Light from Other Stars

by Erika Swyler

  “I’m sorry,” she said, though it wasn’t enough. “I needed something good to come from it, you know?”

  “It did, though, didn’t it? Eventually.”

  “Yeah.” The words were building up. “You look good,” she said. Awkward and required, but also true.

  “I miss you,” he said. “I used to think you’d stay in Easter. I’d take over the grove, we’d get married and have kids. I didn’t get why you wanted to leave. I was so fucking mad at you when you left for school.”

  “You’re not mad anymore?”

  “How am I gonna be mad at you with your eye like that? Come on.” He fidgeted in his chair. “I should have called sooner.”

  Something in her let go. She could have tried to stay. It wouldn’t have taken much bending to live with Denny, to fall into that kind of ease she’d thought married couples were supposed to have. The easiest hardest thing.

  “You were always too nice for me,” she said. “What happened to your dad?”

  “What do you think? He stroked out yelling at a Department of Agriculture guy right in the middle of his office.” His laugh cracked with static. It wasn’t surprising at all; Marcanta would have tagged Pop Prater as a stroke risk on sight without ever hearing him yell or seeing his skin purple and blotch.

  “If the grove runs itself, why didn’t you keep it?” Her good eye started hurting. Marcanta said the headaches were her body trying to navigate the pressure imbalance. Denny asked if she was all right. “Keep talking,” she said. “It’s good to hear your voice. I miss you.”

  “Okay,” he said. With her eyes closed, they could be lying on the floor of her bedroom again, talking up at the sticker stars. “I didn’t want to stay. Not wanting to and not being able to are kind of the same thing.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “So who has Prater now?”

  “Some agricultural science conglomerate. They focus on reviving legacy crops and revegetating old farm areas. It turns out that Prater oranges are immune to Powder Spot, that super fungus thing that killed everything off. It looks like it started with fertilizers and cultivars in the late nineties. We missed it. Prater is one of three groves in the world without it. It’s like a citrus museum. This think tank figures they can bring back oranges from our trees. They paid me a shitload for it.”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  “I bought Mom a house near where Port St. Lucie was before the flooding. She likes it there. She’s got friends, does painting and stuff. I never even knew she liked painting, but she’s not half bad. She does a lot of sunsets, but I guess that’s a requirement. Nobody there knows she’s a Gapper. She likes that.”

  No one had ever asked the Praters what they wanted. Denny was supposed to run the grove. Annie was supposed to be a wife, a mother. But Nedda remembered her soft hands, and all the times she’d tried to help, even when Denny was trapped. Annie Prater had held on to the sequencer. She’d helped lift the needle. Annie had made sure Denny saw her before she left for the space station. “I’m glad you did that for her. So she’s okay?”

  “Probably better than she’s ever been.”

  “That’s good. Tell her I say hi. Hug her for me, will you?” It was a hard thing to admit that you might be better off for someone having died.

  “I bought a car shop,” he said. “I specialize in the ones that run on gas, fix them up, convert them. Everything we grew up with is a classic now, and not many people know how to work on them. It’s good money.”

  She laughed. “We’re old as hell.”

  “Fucking ancient, but the baby face fools everyone. I got a boat too. It’s not real big, just enough to take a few people out, that’s all.”

  “What’d you name it?”

  “Flux Capacitor.”

  “Doc Brown’s a better name.”

  “Yeah, but boats are women.”

  “Everything’s a woman. Cars, boats, houses. Anywhere that’s safe or takes you somewhere better is a woman,” she said.

  “So, Chawla is a woman?”

  “Obviously.” She opened her eye to find him staring.

  “Life was better for you after the gap, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  “I think so, but it’s hard to see something when you’re in the middle of it. I don’t know what we missed, because we missed it.” Had it not happened, it would have been a different life entirely. The time jump had offered her opportunities that wouldn’t have existed otherwise, but nothing was without cost.

  “But you miss him every day.”

  “Yeah. I still do.”

  “I miss Pop, even though I know he was an asshole. It’s messed up.” He stretched his arms above his head, and it hurt Nedda a little, knowing they’d never lie out on a dock again, that they weren’t on the floor of her bedroom.

  “You’re always going to miss him, that’s just how it works. And you’re always going to see him everywhere too. That never changes.” Every now and again, Evgeni’s back looked like her father’s, and it gave her a start.

  “They’re renaming Red Bug Road after you.” What a gift to have a smile like that, one that looked better for being broken.

  “When I die, they’ll probably rename the school after me too.”

  “Shut up, jerk. Don’t say stuff like that,” he said. “I’m still mad at you for lying to me, you know. You went somewhere where I can’t punch your arm for doing something stupid.”

  “Well, I can’t punch you either. And you were supposed to keep the grove so I’d always know where you’d be. So even when you weren’t talking to me I’d know where you were, what you were up to. That helped.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, when the pause grew too long.

  “It’s okay. How’s Kate?”

  “She’s good. She still thinks I’m in love with you.”

  “She’ll get over it when you have a kid.” Kate. Perfectly lovely, cute in a way that made you want to smile. She fit Denny well, and she wasn’t bending to do it.

  “I don’t know if we’ll do the kid thing. It’s not a great time to be a kid. I don’t know if I could handle one.” He leaned back in his chair, his shadow harsh on the wall behind him. The call rooms were tiny gray cubicles, little more than boxes with screens. “She wants one, but … I don’t know how to explain to her that I’m not quite right. She doesn’t understand our friendship either, but what am I supposed to say?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She really does think that I love you. I watched you for years. I know it was only seconds to you, I get that. You told me and I knew it too, sort of. But years, you know? I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—I don’t know when you left, but when you did leave I wasn’t there anymore. I wasn’t me. It took you probably a week to leave the shed. I knew you were running, but I fell asleep and woke up and you were still leaving. Then it was nothing for a long time, just me and that stupid pruner. I can close my eyes now and still see you in dark blue corduroy stirrup pants. You had a white T-shirt on that said ‘Georgia Peach,’ and a light blue shiny jacket with pink piping. Your hair was in one braid. You had bangs then and they were crooked. I still don’t know how your mom cut them crooked when I know she used a ruler. There was dirt by your left eye and you tried to wipe it but it stayed there. If you were any closer I bet I could tell you what your fingerprint looked like. I thought about every conversation we ever had. For so long it was only you. We were the only people in the world. I did love you. You were everything. And then I was too old, and I wasn’t me anymore, and you were gone. Kate’s wrong, but not entirely. She just doesn’t understand and it’s hard to explain. She’s a worrier.”

  “I didn’t know you remembered that much.” It was the only safe thing to say.

  “Every year I remember a little more. It’s like I’m catching up. That worries Kate too.”

  “Singh says that worrying about other people feels like you’re doing something, but worrying about yourself just feels like worrying.”

&nbs
p; “Maybe,” he said. He cracked his neck, revealing the bald patch behind his ear where he’d tugged his hair out. Maybe his body was catching up too. “Do you like this Singh guy? Everything I’ve seen about him makes him seem irritating as hell. He’s got what, three degrees? Rescued sea turtles or something? He’s too smart. I don’t like it. He’s too perfect.”

  God, but it was good to laugh. “Nobody up here is perfect. We’re in a tin can, living in each other’s farts, praying the plants filter them out before the stench kills us. Singh is a moody jerk, but I’m worse. And yes, I like him, but no, not like that. It’s different here.” They were all part of Chawla. Loving them was essential, but they’d never be Denny. She’d never be for them what Denny had described. “You’d get along with Evgeni,” she said. “He’s one of those lucky, happy people. It would drive me crazy, but it’s hard to hate anyone you rely on this much. You’d probably hit on Marcanta, but she’d slap you.”

  She tried to imagine where he’d fit on Chawla, but couldn’t. Denny was built for sun, for ground, and for Kate who worried. Kate who didn’t understand that Denny was part of Nedda too—a bone in her leg that held her up. That was all and everything.

  “I never told you, but I think I’m a better person because of what happened to me. I want you to know that,” Denny said.

  “You’ve always been a good person.”

  “I wasn’t really good at being patient, or listening to people, really. I think having all that time with myself fixed some of that. Made me think about how much I need people.”

  “But right after you didn’t want to talk to me.”

  “I was scared. I knew something had happened but not what. Things got jumbled. It’s still hard to remember when anything was, or the order stuff happened in, or if I made it up. We tried catfish tickling once, right?”

  “Yeah.” She’d been nine or so. Pop Prater brought them to a lake away from the coast. The fish were sly, made of teeth and lake bottom.

  “For a while, remembering anything from the equipment shed was like that. Like when your hand is down in the mud and you’re sure you’ve got a fish, but it scoots away. I’d think I’d latched on to something, a solid memory, and then it was gone. Slippery, I guess. The only things I was sure of were the morning Challenger blew up, and when my mom grabbed me out of the pruner chair.”

  As much as she still saw him as twelve, she thought of him as everything he was and would be—fifteen, twenty-five, forty, sixty, eighty-eight. All of the lean, fast years he’d lived while the world sat still around him. “I should have stopped you from going that morning,” she said.

  “Ever try to stop a train?”

  The treadmill was running, and the sounds of food prep came down the corridor. Louisa jogging. Amit with a knife. They should say their goodbyes. Instead she told him about Evgeni’s horrible taste in music and penchant for sardines, Amit’s pink hair ties, and what having a needle in your eye was like. They talked about movies they remembered that the rest of the world had forgotten. He told her about trying to catch bluefish off his boat. It was the comfort of shared history.

  “If I don’t get to speak to you …” she said.

  “You’ll call me.”

  “There’s a chance I won’t be able to fix it.”

  “You’ll call me.” The squareness in his voice melted away, taking with it some of the years and space.

  “I will. I’ll fix it.”

  They lied to each other, but they were good lies, meant to be true.

  “Is it morning or night up there?”

  “Hard to tell. It’s morning, I guess.”

  “Then have a good day, Nedda. I’m lucky to know you. Tell Judy Resnik I say hi.”

  The feed cut, and Denny’s face was replaced by Mission Control jockeys, sliding their hands arounds screens.

  Nedda left the room, unable to speak.

  There were five sights Nedda would forever remember: the smoke plumes from Challenger bleeding across the sky, Denny’s bones stretching while she watched, her father the last time she saw him, Earthrise from the moon, and Evgeni’s goggled face when the tape was peeled from her bad eye.

  He was tender, separating each hair without pulling. All done by feel.

  “You’d hate me if you lost an eyebrow. Everyone is vain when it comes to having half an eyebrow.”

  “Just rip it off, please.”

  “You’ll want to scratch it and rub it. You’re a picker. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. I hear you picking at your skin. Always picking, twitching like a bird.”

  The first light to her eye was textured, nap-in-a-sunbeam light, like nothing on Chawla. It bent around shapes, darkness, the side of a neck, then, the glinting edge of pressure goggles. Evgeni’s eyes were large and blue, too big for him, fragile. Blown glass. She saw clear striations in his irises, minute veins in the sclera. There was a sheen to his skin. He’d had a shave that morning, an actual shave. She ran her hand against his cheek to be sure it wasn’t glare or a halo. He was smooth, a little slick.

  “I see you,” she said.

  “And I’m still handsome.”

  “No less than you ever were.”

  “Years into space, and you still think you’ve got to be a diplomat.”

  “You’re wearing the goggles.”

  “Yes, look at how hopeful I am being and admire me.” He grinned. “You let Louisa remove part of your eye. The very least I can do is wear goggles.”

  She closed her good eye—what had been her good eye. Evgeni was soft and sharp at the same time. His hair grew only in cowlicks. She wanted to press the center of one with her thumb, right by his temple, just above the goggle straps. Pale. If he’d grown up in Florida, he’d have flecked skin and a permanent brown burned into him.

  “Do you ever think about how none of us are the colors we think we are? We’re just reflecting different wavelengths.” Nothing looked exactly the same for any two beings. Mice saw things in gray, yellow, and blue. Trichromatic vision was common between old-world primates and humans, but not with new-world primates. Not with marmosets. Not all humans had it either. Color blindness was particularly common in men, and most people couldn’t see the full color spectrum humans were supposed to. Insect eyes processed colors she could never imagine. All those colors, all that light. Evgeni nearly glowed with it. “You’re highly reflective,” she said.

  She could see. She could see to do the build.

  Marcanta appeared with a cloth and shoved it under Nedda’s eye. “Dab both eyes, but don’t wipe. No pressure yet, okay? And no picking.” She asked if there was stinging, pain of any variety, uncomfortable pressure.

  There was no pain, just wonder. Earthrise from the moon had been blue and cold, starting in her toes rather than her eyes. She’d cried. Dr. Stein said that Earthrise made everyone do that. Evgeni-rise had been warm, bright. His face, his eyes, the glow of him had been a welcoming moon.

  Louisa swatted Evgeni lightly on the shoulder. “Give me some room. We need to do tests.”

  “Abuse! I cry abuse,” he said.

  Louisa ignored him and pulled up a Snellen chart on the lab screen. “Top to bottom. Do it first with the eye I poked, then again with the other eye. No guessing. No cheating.”

  She’d been raised to perform on tests, to figure out answers even when missing information. It went against her nature not to try to answer correctly. The letters held their basic shapes; she knew them. “Fuzzy on the bottom.”

  “Give it time, but don’t guess,” Louisa said.

  She didn’t guess.

  “Louisa, we’re going to fix it.”

  At night, Marcanta hung from a rung in Nedda’s cabin. “Me, then Singh, then Evgeni. We need to do me before we make any attempt at the drive.”

  “Makes sense. That way Singh will have a shot at Amadeus if I get fried.” A flask floated to her. Nedda unscrewed the cap and took a small sip of rum, which Marcanta loved, but to her tasted burned and sour.

  “I sho
uldn’t dignify that with a response, but yeah. You’re going to have to do mine. I’ll lay everything out for you as much as I can. If we talk to each other, keep the video going, it should be fine.”

  “That’s brave of you.”

  “No, it’s just smart to not let Singh near me with the vitrector. Plus, you’re you. You learn. If you mess it up once, you’ll get it right the next time, but Singh wouldn’t pick up the vitrector again. He’s too afraid of breaking eggs. I can forgive human error. He can’t.”

  “Did you know he tried to talk to his pet tortoise telepathically?”

  Marcanta grinned and swallowed more rum. “Figures.” She squeezed herself beside Nedda’s sleep sack. “If we make planet—”

  “When we make planet.”

  “If we make planet, your vision’s most likely going to flip, so we’ll do one eye each for now. On planet, the bad eye should clear up some, and the one I fixed, who knows? I’ll put saline or an oil bead in to balance the pressure.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Nedda said.

  They passed the flask in a careful dance of capping and recapping, covering with thumbs, and stretching to catch errant droplets. It burned, but it eased the loneliness.

  Louisa had calls with her sister sometimes, and during them her laugh was broad and catching, but there was always sadness to it. Nedda stayed in Hydroponics, pruning and grafting, to hide from it. She’d never met Michael to know that kind of missing. Denny was it, but that was different too.

  Louisa rested her head on Nedda’s shoulder. Her face was flushed, a bright spot of warmth through Nedda’s shirt. The back of her head was round against Nedda’s palm, her hair soft, sleek, and black. She smelled like rum and rubbing alcohol, aloe, and the inside of her sleep sack, as complex and comforting a scent as a baby blanket.

  Louisa had an ex who was a dentist. Singh found the idea repugnant and said so once while they were drinking. He’d latched a boot into one of the handles on the common room wall, and was rolling back and forth in midair, the closest he could get to the satisfaction of tapping his foot. “How did you deal with the dentist smell? The glove stink and drilled tooth. It’s like burning hair. It gets in their clothes and it never leaves.”