Gateway to the Moon_A Novel

by Mary Morris

  At the Hall of Meteorites she watches a brief film that tells how meteorites are the Rosetta stone of outer space, how they enable us to grasp the wonders of the world. There are pictures of the wilderness in Siberia where in Tunguska a giant fireball struck the Earth and caused brush fires to burn for two decades. She walks around the small meteorites that line the room. They all have names. Gibeon, Guffey, Knowles, Diablo.

  Then in the middle of the room is Ahnighito, the greatest meteorite of them all. Weighing thirty-four tons it struck Greenland ten thousand years ago. The Inuit believe it was hurled to Earth by the gods. Its name means the Tent. There are two other meteorites that were once part of Ahnighito. They are called the Woman and the Dog. The tent, the woman, the dog—all that is required for a happy life.

  One night in New Mexico when she was just a girl she stood outside with her father as an enormous flash of light came shooting across the sky. Not like a shooting star but a fireball. Her father pointed to the sky. “That’s a bolide,” he told her for he had read about such things. He explained that a meteorite had entered the atmosphere where it might burn out or might strike the Earth. It was rare to see one.

  Once it seemed to Elena that her father knew everything and that he had read everything, when in fact he had only learned such things when he was stationed in Korea in the dental unit. The soldiers were afraid of the dentist so her father had a lot of time on his hands. There was a shelf in the mess hall where soldiers left the books they’d finished and he read as many as he could. “Almost no one ever sees a bolide,” he told her. “You’ll have luck in your life, m’hija.” As Elena strolls, she misses her father. She thinks about how big the universe is and how little we know. Perhaps if she hadn’t crushed her ankle, she would be dancing her way to the stars. But anything can strike us at any time. On her way out of the museum Elena ponders the simple things. The tent, the woman, the dog. Footprints so close you’d have to be touching.

  She hesitates at the gift shop. In another one of his letters Roberto told her that at night Miguel goes to the old cemetery to look at the sky. She’d gone there herself many times as a girl. She liked to sit under the old oak tree among the crumbling stones with the strange lettering on them. The nights were as black as any she’s ever seen and the Milky Way stretched across the sky. She stood on that hill, waiting for another bolide to shoot out of the sky.

  She is browsing among the constellation ties and scarves, the books, the night-sky star kits. Then she comes to a row of telescopes. Some are small and compact. Others are large and bulky. Labels describe their focal lengths and apertures. One says that it has the most reduced chromatic aberration. Elena has no idea what any of it means. But she peers through one lens and finds she can read a street sign that is more than a mile away.

  She goes up to the saleswoman. “I’m looking for a telescope for a boy who is interested in astronomy.” The woman shows her two or three that might be appropriate. Elena picks a slim blue one that seems lightweight and portable. The saleswoman suggests a tripod, and Elena takes one of those as well. “Can you mail this to New Mexico?” she asks.

  “We mail anywhere,” the woman replies. “Would you like to include a gift card?”

  Elena hesitates for a moment. It was his birthday last month after all. “I would,” she says.

  The woman hands Elena a card. On it is a comet, shooting across the sky. On a practice piece of paper she scribbles. “I heard from your dad that you are into the stars.” She doesn’t like this. It is too personal. She rewrites it to read, “I hear that you are into the stars. Hope you enjoy this. Tía E.” Should she put xs at the bottom? Is that too personal? Is this too impersonal? In the end she just signs her name. It is more than she has ever written to him. And even it feels like too much.

  She only held him once as a baby. Then she put him in her mother’s arms and walked away. As she watches the saleswoman packing the telescope, she wonders if she should be sending him a gift at all. But this is something she can do for him. As long as he never knows that he is hers. And that she left him behind long ago.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  WHY?—1992

  Two weeks after the snake bit Davie, Mr. Garcia asks Miguel to see him after class. They are in the middle of a biology lesson on the anatomy of frogs. They have just pithed two frogs and one lies splayed on Miguel’s desk, its legs wiggling, when Mr. Garcia leans over and tells him to “wait up” when they’re done. Miguel nods as he stares down at his frog. It’s writhing with a pin through its neck. His stomach clenches the way it has been clenching since Davie was bitten, and a cold shiver runs down his spine. Why would Mr. Garcia ask to see him?

  As Mr. Garcia walks away, heading down the rows, glancing at the dissection of frogs, Miguel thinks he will be sick. He is certain that what he’d come to fear the most—that the police will arrest him for endangering the welfare of a child—is about to happen. He knows about child endangerment because he watches so many crime shows and courtroom procedurals on TV with his mother. It is one of the few things they enjoy doing together. Not speaking, silently staring at the screen.

  What if Dr. Rothstein has decided to press charges? From what little he’s seen of the doctor he wouldn’t put it past him. And Miguel already has a record, doesn’t he? Just for disorderly conduct and reckless endangerment, but it put him in juvie for a month. His court-appointed lawyer had gone to the trouble of trying to get it expunged from his record. “Just three boys playing chicken on a country road, Your Honor.” But the judge would hear nothing of it. So if Dr. Rothstein comes after him, Miguel can be looking at prison for what—six months, a year?

  He scratches at the stubble of his beard and fingers a pimple on his chin. His skin has turned oily in recent weeks and pimples are popping up all over its once smooth surface. Even his mother has noticed. “It’s puberty,” she says. As he watches his frog, its legs twitching, and Mr. Garcia ambling in the aisles, he wonders what else his favorite teacher could possibly have to say. He could come up with an excuse. He has to go to the bathroom. And then he’ll get into his car, drive away, and keep driving.

  He’s been driving around lately. Right after the snakebite happened, Miguel rushed Davie to the hospital. And after Dr. Rothstein yelled at him, he left. He didn’t know where he was going, he just drove around aimlessly. Eventually he went home, but then he began calling the hospital. He called every hour until he was sure that Davie was all right. He kept calling even after the hospital assured him that Davie had gone home.

  Then he started driving by the school to make certain. He saw Davie on the jungle gym, but he was always alone. Not really playing with anyone, just sitting. He wanted to park, get out, and ask him if he was all right. He wanted to say “Sorry.” He wanted to ask Davie how he was doing and if he was still working on his right hook. And he wanted to tell Davie how brave he’d been. But if Miguel was seen standing by the school fence talking to a six-year-old, they’d arrest him in a heartbeat. And probably jail him as a sex offender.

  Every day he goes to school in a state of panic and every afternoon he returns home more or less in the same state. He is sure the patrol car will be waiting for him in front of the trailer. He envisions scenes in which police officers take him away. He can imagine his mother crying, “But he’s a good boy. He’s never hurt anyone. Not on purpose anyway.” He envisions the squad car, the officer putting his hand on his head the way they do on TV so that he doesn’t bump it as he gets into the car.

  Miguel is a loser. He knows that. If he’d doubted it before, it is now officially confirmed. He has a knack, almost a skill, for not doing things right. If someone hands him a precious keepsake, he’ll lose it. If he gets a puppy, he’ll drop it. A girl. He’ll ruin it. A job. He’ll blow it. The losses keep piling up like one of those baseball teams (those Cubs) who can never win or like that Boston infielder who let the World Series slip between his legs in a bungled grounder. So he takes two boys for a walk and one of them gets bitten by
a rattlesnake. These things don’t just happen to anyone, do they?

  Miguel is looking to see if he can make his getaway, but Mr. Garcia keeps his eyes on him. Mr. Garcia is old, but not that old, like forty. Older than his mom which is already pretty old to Miguel. He always wears a tie and sometimes colorful ones. During different sports seasons he wears special ties. Football, baseball, basketball. He has a Santa Claus tie for Christmas and a turkey tie for Thanksgiving. Miguel thinks it is pretty silly, the way Mr. Garcia always wants to get along and blend in. He is always glad-handing the kids, giving them high fives. Trying to be too cool. But what Mr. Garcia is very good at is science.

  It is Mr. Garcia who taught Miguel to question everything. Over his desk Mr. Garcia has a single word in white against a black backdrop: WHY? Whenever anything happens, Mr. Garcia makes the kids ask themselves why. When Miguel’s ink-distilling experiment exploded last year, Mr. Garcia wasn’t mad, even though the ink went all over the place. He looked Miguel square in the eye and said, “Okay, now ask yourself: Why did the ink-distilling experiment explode?”

  Since Mr. Garcia has been his teacher, he’s asked himself why a million times. And then he applies it to things outside of science. Why did Mrs. Rothstein hire me? Why did the snake have to bite Davie? Why is Jeremy a bully? Why does Mr. Garcia want him to stay after school? Sweat pours down his back. There is no reason. All of Miguel’s homework is in. His test scores are good. He hasn’t been playing hooky. So there is no reason except that the police are coming to arrest him and Mr. Garcia is here to make certain that he goes peacefully. Isn’t that what they do in the movies?

  “Are you all right, Miguel?” Mr. Garcia asks as the others are filing out of the classroom and the school and back into their normal lives of afternoon sports and smoking joints and beer and girls and maybe homework. But not Miguel. No, his life is about to irrevocably change.

  “I’m fine, sir,” Miguel replies, not looking up.

  “You look a little pale.”

  “I’m fine, sir.”

  “Well,” Mr. Garcia sits on the edge of his desk, his dark eyes piercing. “You’ve been quiet lately. Usually you talk more in class.”

  “I’m just tired. I’ve got a job,” Miguel replies, “out in the mall.” He has no idea why he lies, especially to Mr. Garcia whom he likes and respects.

  “That’s good,” Mr. Garcia says, clapping his hands together. Miguel looks up and sees that Mr. Garcia is wearing a tie with pumpkins all over it. Is it already Halloween? How has so much time gone by? This is something Miguel wonders about. Does time always take up as much time? What makes time move more quickly at certain times than others? This is what Miguel likes about Mr. Garcia. He taught him how to ask questions. The question, Mr. Garcia believes, is often more important than the answer. “I hope you’re saving up for college.”

  Miguel shrugs. “I’ve got other things to pay for.”

  Mr. Garcia nods, a look of understanding sweeping over his round, almost pudgy face. “Well, that’s what I want to talk to you about.” Miguel looks at Mr. Garcia for the first time since he told him he wants to speak to him. “I want to nominate you for something.”

  A grin breaks across Miguel’s face. “Nominate me?” He points to himself as if to make certain Mr. Garcia means him.

  “Yes. For a National Science Foundation Scholarship.” So this isn’t about the snakebite. Maybe he isn’t going to be led away in handcuffs. Not today anyway. “All you have to do is come up with a project proposal. I’ll help you. We can work on that together. Maybe one of your astronomy ideas? Don’t you have that idea about one of Jupiter’s moons having water on it?”

  “A frozen sea. Yes, but it’s nothing I can prove. The Lowell Observatory can’t even prove it.”

  “Well, we don’t have to decide now. Why don’t you come up with a few ideas? We can talk them over. Take it from there.”

  Ideas? Miguel shakes his head. His mind is a blank. He tries to remember when he last had an idea. Normally he is just full of them but in the past couple of weeks, he hasn’t had any ideas except how to get the hell out of Entrada before the police come after him. In fact he’s only barely looked at the stars in weeks and then it is because he is having a smoke and once to make out briefly with a girl who dropped out of high school last year. He certainly doesn’t think he is in a good position to prove that there is life on Mars. Or even microbes in that frozen sea on Europa. “I’ll try and think of something, sir.”

  “Look, here are the forms. Let’s put our heads together and come up with a cracker-jack proposal. I bet you can get an NSF scholarship and then”—Mr. Garcia raises his arms into the air as if he were going to float away—“the sky’s the limit.”

  Miguel thanks his teacher and takes the forms. He flings his backpack over his shoulder and heads toward his car. Halfway there Miguel pauses to light a cigarette, which he smokes all the way to the filter. Then he gets into his car, stuffs the forms into the glove compartment where he keeps dozens of little things he plans to never look at again, such as traffic violations and bad report cards, and drives away.

  On his way home he stops at Roybal’s to pick up the mail, grab a chocolate bar, and buy a pack of cigarettes, ostensibly for his mother. “You’ve got a package,” Vincent Roybal says. The old man shuffles into the back of the store and comes out with a large box that he puts on the counter. Miguel glances at the return address: Hayden Planetarium, New York. He takes it, puts it in his car, and heads home, where he opens it on the kitchen counter. Inside is a telescope. Slim and blue. State-of-the-art telescope with a three-inch aperture and a seven hundred millimeter focal length. It is three times more powerful than the one Miguel built and has a tripod too.

  He takes it out of its wrapping. There’s a card from his aunt Elena. His father must have told her that he was interested in the stars. Later that evening before his mother gets home, he takes the telescope outside and plants it on the tripod. He adjusts the lens and starts to pan the sky. It is as if he’s a person who needed glasses and hasn’t realized it until now. The whole sky comes into focus. He can see the craters on the moon as if they were canyons nearby. He pans to the planets. He sharpens his focus on the rings of Saturn. The colors are startling. Then on to Jupiter. Miguel thinks of Galileo trying to solve the problem of longitude by using the moons of Jupiter. With this new telescope Miguel can make out those moons. Perhaps he will even find one of his own.

  Except Miguel knows that he will never amount to anything. He knows that he has failed at everything he’s ever tried to do. So he folds the tripod and puts the telescope back into the box. He slides it under his bed and proceeds to forget that it ever existed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  AN OLD MAN IN NEW SPAIN—1599

  Federico de Torres wakes as he does every morning with sores in his mouth. They are also on his hands and his neck. And yet even as he begins his morning ablutions of astringents and salts, he does not curse his illness. Instead, he recalls that had his father not discovered that the only real relief for his son’s symptoms was an ointment of aloe laced with gold, he would never have come to the viceroyalty of New Spain and probably would not be alive. He is alive because his father believed what the sailors who returned from New Spain told him. That the streets of Montezuma’s empire were paved in pure gold and his son would never want for his cure. At the same time, his father knew that his son carried within him the dark family secret. The renowned Dr. Eduardo de Torres of Córdoba was a scientific man, and he knew that the disease from which his son suffered was very rare, often fatal, and only found among the race that called themselves Jews.

  Federico gazes in the mirror. He has seen himself look better, and he has seen himself look worse. At any rate he is long past the concerns of vanity. All he seeks now is comfort in his old age. He begins his preparation of warm salt water, which he splashes onto his face and neck. Salt water has always soothed his wounds. Once the stinging stops and his flesh is dry, he take
s the jar of ointment and dabs the gold flecks on his hands and neck. He touches it to the sores inside his mouth and on his gums. People who do not understand this cure are stunned when he speaks to them and they are coated in gold.

  Sofia is still asleep, her brow furrowed. He doesn’t like to see that worried look on his wife’s face. The night before she had pleaded with him. “Don’t go into the field tomorrow. Stay home with me.” He’d laughed at her concern.

  “Is this one of your premonitions?” he teased her, for he didn’t believe in such things. But she’d shaken her head.

  “Just stay home,” she said.

  Federico sits beside her and gently rubs her brow. At the foot of their bed one of her two dogs stirs. He will not allow her to keep all the dogs in their room for they would take up every inch of space. Nor will he allow her to witness the ritual of cleansings he performs every day. He never lets her see his naked flesh in the light of day for fear that he will repulse her. During the two decades of their marriage, she has never seen his body except in darkness. Not that she would mind. Federico knows only too well that his wife adores him. At least she has come to love him.

  This wasn’t always the case. She had loved another before him—someone she will not talk about. Perhaps someone who jilted her. She was almost thirty when they married, but he won her over. Looking at her, he chuckles. Almost twenty years ago he had been tentative with her when she came to him on their wedding night, dressed in the long white gown that tied around her wrists, neck, and ankles, and with the cross-shaped triangle near the groin where Federico understood he was to penetrate her.