On the way back to the car, Mr. Biersdorfer paused for a moment in talking to my father about congressional budget hearings.
“What did you think of that?” he shouted at me and Eric.
“Cool,” said Eric dismissively. Mr. Biersdorfer turned his attention to me. I took in a breath, but found that I couldn’t say anything. I realized I had been crying.
“Are you okay, honey?” Mr. Biersdorfer asked quietly, stooping down to see my face. That made me like him a little more. All three of them were looking at me now. I was as surprised as anyone that the launch had made me cry—it was the beauty of it, but also the frustration of being left behind, being left on the ground. I looked at my father, afraid of what he would think of me, but he put his arm around my shoulders and handed me a crumpled tissue from his pocket. We started walking back toward the car. I avoided looking in Eric’s direction.
“I remember I misted up a little bit at my first launch,” Mr. Biersdorfer said, his old loud self again. “Now, that was a Mercury test, and let me tell you I had something to cry about because it blew up on the launchpad. It was unmanned, of course,” he added quickly.
“This isn’t my first launch,” I pointed out.
“Oh.” Mr. Biersdorfer straightened up, surprised. “No, of course not.”
The men went back to talking about the same boring things as before, and Eric and I walked on silently. We climbed into the car, and Mr. Biersdorfer turned on the air-conditioning full blast. After a brief lull in their conversation, we heard Mr. Biersdorfer say, “I know Eric is going to miss Dolores and the gang at Palmetto Park next year.”
My father murmured knowingly, but a moment later, he seemed to realize that he didn’t know what Mr. Biersdorfer was talking about.
“Where is Eric going?” he asked.
Mr. Biersdorfer glanced over his shoulder at me for the briefest second. “We’re moving Eric to another school. We’ve all agreed that Eric would be a better fit in a different environment.”
Eric forgot his resolution to stare out the window and turned to look at me. A moment later he turned back, but during that second of eye contact, I saw him again as a whole person: his icy gray eyes, his dangerous intelligence, his cold love for me. All along, I’d thought somehow that what I was doing to him didn’t count, that he somehow didn’t feel it because I didn’t actually want to hurt him—everything I’d done, I felt I’d been forced to do. But what if he had felt it? What if I had hurt him?
My father looked at me kindly for the rest of the day. He liked that I’d cried, that I’d been enthralled by the launch—he thought I’d been moved, as he was, by the power and perfection of the machine.
When we got home, he told my mother proudly about everything that had gone on. She wanted details, wanted to know everyone’s exact words. I started to understand, listening to them, that they both assumed it had been Eric’s idea to invite my father and me to the launch, not Mr. Biersdorfer’s. I wanted my father to know that Eric never would have chosen to invite me anywhere, that it must have been Mr. Biersdorfer. I knew this would make them happy if they knew it, give them hope that Mr. Biersdorfer liked my father enough to pull strings for him, but I couldn’t think of a way to tell them. Any way that I could bring it up would have to involve my telling them that Eric hated me now, and why. And I could never tell them that.
That night, I entered the launch into my notebook:
STS 51-D, Discovery.
April 12, 1985. Delayed 45 minutes for bad weather. Launch at 8:59 am.
Payload of STS 51-E was combined with 51-D (51-E was canceled due to inertial upper stage problems). Rhea Seddon is on this flight. She will conduct medical experiments. Also on board is Jake Garn, a US senator from Utah. He is on the Space Appropriations Committee.
I saw this launch with my father, Eric Biersdorfer, and Mr. Biersdorfer, the Director of Launch Safety.
My mother took me back to the same strip mall. She didn’t make as elaborate an excuse to my father this time, just told him we needed some things and slipped out after dinner. In the car, she rolled down the windows and sang along with the radio.
This time she left me in the bookstore—I was in Young Adult and she was in Self Help—when I saw her slide a book back onto the shelf and move toward the exit, pulling her purse strap higher on her arm. She wasn’t gone long this time, maybe forty-five minutes, and when she came back, she wanted to buy me an ice cream. As she drove, I watched her face: it seemed she wasn’t about to tell me where she had been and who she had seen. She smiled to herself while we ate our ice cream, hummed quietly, talked about clothes she wanted to buy for me, for herself, for Delia. We couldn’t get really good things here in Palmetto Park, she pointed out. Maybe we should try Titusville, or even Orlando.
“Why are we doing this tonight?” I asked.
“What do you mean, baby?”
“Why are we here? Why did you take me out?”
“Oh, just to get out for a bit,” she said mischievously. “Just to have fun.”
“Why couldn’t we bring Dad and Delia?” I asked.
“Just the two of us,” my mother answered, and gave me a wink. It was true that I enjoyed having her to myself; it gave me a feeling of grown-up sophistication and cheer. Two girls out on the town. I couldn’t help but be drawn in by it, even if I knew there was another layer underneath.
On the last day of school, Elizabeth invited us to a slumber party at her house the following weekend.
“I don’t think I can,” I lied. “My grandparents will be visiting.”
“Can’t you get away even one night?”
“I shouldn’t. I haven’t seen them for years. But you guys have fun without me.”
“That’s too bad,” Elizabeth said, putting on an exaggerated sad face. I was amazed, as always, that a lie could change everything so easily. The girls went on making their plans without me.
As they did, I watched Eric Biersdorfer across the room. He cleaned out his desk, piling handfuls of crumpled homework papers on the floor. Now and then, he came across something he wanted to keep, smoothed it, and carefully placed it into a folder. When he was finished, he threw out the pile of trash, slipped the notebook and a few books into his backpack, and zipped it shut. He took no notice of me watching him, or pretended not to. When the bell rang, I followed him as he walked calmly through the hallways clogged with screaming kids. I almost called out his name to say goodbye, but I didn’t, and instead I stood watching as he passed through the front doors for the last time, and climbed into his mother’s Oldsmobile waiting at the curb.
Launch Delays
7.
THE FIRST WEEK OF JULY WAS TERRIBLY HOT, AND OUR AIR-CONDITIONING broke. In the days before it could be fixed, we hardly slept; we just lay in our swampy dark beds waiting for a breeze. My mother worked late several nights in a row that week, one night so late that she was still gone when my father and Delia went to bed.
Now that I never saw him anymore, I thought of Eric all the time. He had a way of shrugging before he started to write something, just a quick jerk of the right shoulder up to his ear, which made him seem to be dedicating himself completely to whatever he was about to write, as though shrugging off the world and its constraints entirely. Sometimes I found myself doing his shrug, a bit self-consciously, in remembrance of him. His gray eyes, the freckle just under one of them, like an exclamation point. His sandy brown hair, the way it stuck up in the back. The way he licked the front of his teeth before saying something important. The sour milk smell of his breath, his jerky way of walking, his girly way of crossing one leg over the other, jiggling the top foot unself-consciously. He was the only boy I knew who would do that.
Sometimes I could hear his voice in my head, his thin reedy voice with the slight lisp, the way some of his s’s slurped quietly in the back of his teeth. His habit of sniffing often while he listened to me, watching my face thoughtfully with no pretense toward wavering, no uncomfortable glancing away.
I had been reading my space notebook in bed for a long time when I heard my mother’s key rasp in the lock. I tried to arrange myself into a convincing sleeping position. Her steps moved slowly up the hallway, and I heard her stop at our open door. I could see her clearly by the streetlight that shone in my window—she wore her work clothes, a skirt and blouse and stockings, her high-heeled shoes dangling from one hand. I could tell everything about her mood, about her day, from the way she rested her hip against the door frame, from the sound of her breathing in and out. Her eye makeup was smudged around her eyes, and her hair stood up on top of her head; as she looked in at me, she raked through it with her fingers absentmindedly. But she was happy. Something had gone well today. Any second now, her eyes would adjust to the light and she would see me, see that I was still awake.
My heart pounded. She blinked at me, her head tilted to one side. Then she put her pinky finger delicately into her left nostril. She pulled it out again and rubbed it slowly against her thumb. She still couldn’t see me—the streetlight must have been in her eyes.
“Mom,” I whispered. Even as I said it, I wondered why I wanted to let her know that I was awake; just a moment before, I had been afraid that she would be angry.
She wasn’t sure she had heard anything at first. The fan whirring in the corner dampened the sound. She dropped her arm to her side and tilted her head, extending her right ear into the room a little.
“Mom,” I whispered again, a little more insistently this time. She squinted and leaned herself into the room, trying to make out my face. I sat up in bed.
“What are you doing up?” she whispered. I felt relieved when I heard her voice—she wasn’t mad.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I lied.
“When did your dad go to bed?”
“A long time ago. I heard him snoring.”
“Oh,” she said. “Good.”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“After one. You should have seen all the work I had to do, D. It was a disaster. I don’t know what Dr. Chalmers would do without me. And I have to be back in there at nine tomorrow.”
“You should get some sleep.”
“Yeah, I know. The thing is, I’m so keyed up from working, I’m not really sleepy either. And it’s so hot. You want to go for a walk?”
“Okay.” I swung my legs out of bed. We’d never gone for a walk at night before, or during the day, for that matter. I followed her down the hall, through the living room, and out the front door. I was still in my nightgown and bare feet. Outside, the air was loud, with all the neighbors’ air conditioners humming, the sounds of cicadas, the cars groaning by on the freeway in the distance. I felt an urge to run, and so I did: I ran barefoot down the middle of the street in my nightgown, the warm night silky on my skin. I looked up to see the stars, but the streetlights almost blocked them out. I could see only a few, shining dimly.
“Come walk with me,” my mother called, holding out her hand. I knew she wanted us to stroll slowly down the sidewalk hand in hand, admiring the flowers in people’s yards. I wanted to keep running, but I went to her anyway. Her hand was warm and moist, and she swung our arms together as we walked.
“What a beautiful night. Doesn’t it smell delicious? Must be those azaleas.” I hadn’t really noticed the smell, but she was right—a low, warm scent, not flowery, but sweet.
“Isn’t it nice to just go for a walk like this, just the two of us?” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, breathing in deeply. This was the mother I wanted: calm, happy, carefree.
“Things are going to change soon, D,” she said. “Things are going to get much better for us. We’ve been going through a rough time for a while now. But soon it’s going to be over.” I waited for her to say more; I could tell she had more to say. But instead she stopped silently in front of a neighbor’s flowering bush.
“Aren’t these pretty,” she said, and plucked one. She held it under my nose so I could smell it. Then she tucked it behind my ear. She fussed with my hair, arranging it around my face.
“So pretty,” she said. Then she said, “Can you keep a secret, D?”
I nodded.
“Your father is getting his job back,” she whispered, leaning in close to me, her eyebrows raised.
“How do you know?” I asked her. My father had been laid off for ten months now. He hadn’t said anything about it all evening, hadn’t acted especially happy, or different in any way. “Why hasn’t he told us?”
She didn’t seem to hear me.
“I knew everything would turn out okay,” she said, smiling. “I knew we just had to be patient. You and Delia will be able to get everything you need. Everything you want. And your parents won’t be so worried all the time. We’ll all be happy again.”
“When did he find out?” I asked.
“You can’t say anything to him about it, D.” She was suddenly serious, her voice low and hard. “You can’t say anything to Delia either. She’s too young to keep it quiet.” She took my hand and started to walk, this time more briskly. We turned a corner, and I was surprised to see our house, dark, in the middle of the street. I’d lost track of where we were. I noticed anew how different our house looked from the others: We didn’t have any flowers in our yard, as most of our neighbors did, and our grass grew every which way, creeping into the spaces between the sidewalk squares. Our house looked impermanent and shabby—the white paint was peeling, the wooden trim had detached itself in places and hung limply. Drips of rust streaked under the drainpipes. I wondered how the other houses stayed so perfect. It seemed as though my father was always working on something, fixing something on the house or mowing the lawn, but it didn’t seem to make any difference—his work somehow just didn’t count as much as the other fathers’.
“Daddy will want to tell you himself, so you’ll have to act surprised,” she said, not taking her eyes off the house. “I just wanted to tell you because you were lying awake worrying. I wanted you to know that everything is going to be okay.”
We crept quietly into the house and she kissed my forehead as I got into bed.
“Sleep tight, baby,” she whispered. “And don’t forget—act surprised!”
I crawled into bed, still smelling the azalea smell on my hair and nightgown. I rolled over to go to sleep. My left hand was still warm and sweaty from her touch.
In the morning, my father asked what time she’d gotten in.
“Oh, about one,” she said breezily. “You should have seen what a madhouse it was there.”
“Did you go out again?” he asked. “I thought I heard the door a second time.”
“No. Well—I opened it again just to make sure it was locked. That must have been what you heard.” When he turned the other way, she winked at me.
“Did you check the mail yet today?” she asked, getting up and going to the door. She came back sorting through a pile of envelopes. She chose one and handed it to my father. He set down his coffee and ripped it open. When he unfolded the letter, we all saw the NASA seal, the blue circle with stars, showing through the paper. His eyes moved quickly over the letter, back and forth, and we all watched them as if the pattern of their movement would tell us what he was reading. He blinked a couple of times, nodded in a satisfied way, refolded the letter, and slipped it back into its envelope.
“What is it?” my mother asked, leaning forward. A manic smile was starting to spread on her face.
He held up the envelope. “It’s from Lerner,” he said. “They’re reinstating my position.”
“My benefits and seniority will carry over like I was never away,” he said, pointing out a part of the letter to her, then turning to look up at her face. She beamed at him. He wiped his eyes with his napkin, and my mother said, “Oh, Frank!” and she threw her arms around his neck. Delia ran to them and hugged them, and then I did too. We all danced around the kitchen table, clasped in one giant hug, my mother pink-cheeked and laughing, as if something funny kept happening over and over again. My father looked at my mother and smiled when she smiled, and hugged back when she embraced him again.
“What do you think, D?” he asked me.
“It’s great, Daddy,” I told him.
That night we went out for dinner, and we were the perfect happy family I had always wanted us to be. Of course, I knew something was wrong. For the rest of the day, I turned it over and over in my mind: She knew, she knew, and examined it from every possible angle. Our walk, and what she had told me, couldn’t have happened. So in the way children can do, I decided that it hadn’t happened, and put it out of my mind. It was easy: I was full of hope for a new era just about to begin. I believed in sudden changes, a small thing setting off a chain of events that would make my family happy, our lives normal, immune to criticism from anyone.
The Time It Takes to Fall Page 10
