The Night of the Comet

by George Bishop

  “Mm—not exactly.”

  The woman pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “Back there somewhere.”

  This struck Lydia as enormously clever, and she laughed.

  “Ava! We got it. Come on, let’s go,” the man in the gray suit called.

  “Darn. I have to go,” Ava said. “Here. Take this.” She pulled a flower from her bouquet. “I like you, Lydia. You’re a very special girl. You’re going to have an amazing life, I can tell.” Lydia took the flower. “Do you believe me? Do you believe Ava?”

  Lydia wasn’t sure what to say to this—it sounded strange—but the woman held her eyes until Lydia was compelled to nod her head and answer, “Yes.”

  The woman touched the palm of her hand to Lydia’s cheek. “Merry Christmas, sugar.”

  And with that, she stood and left. The man in gray escorted her by the arm to the white Cadillac, waving off people’s shouts for autographs. A photographer rushed in to take a picture. “Ava! Ava! Miss Gardner! Over here!” Ava smiled from the backseat of the Cadillac and dangled one bare, tantalizing leg out the door. The photographer got his shot, the door closed, and the cars roared off.

  The camera flash startled Lydia back to her senses. The sidewalk, the cold air, the traffic fumes all began to return. Her encounter with the woman in red couldn’t have lasted more than a minute, but Lydia felt as if she’d been away for days. Her parents appeared at her side, talking excitedly. They still weren’t sure who the lady was.

  “Are you kidding me?” a man said. “That’s Ava Gardner!”

  “Who?” Lydia asked.

  “Oh, mercy me,” her mother said. “I thought I recognized her. Of course. Good gracious. Can you believe that?”

  As they resumed walking, Lydia’s mother recounted in a rush all she knew about Ava Gardner, the famous Hollywood actress: her early marriage to Mickey Rooney, and then to Artie Shaw, and now the scandal with Frank Sinatra, how everyone said she lured him away from Nancy and now the Church wouldn’t let him get a divorce and so he was petitioning Rome … “What in the world do you think she’s doing here?”

  Lydia’s father recognized the name but was indifferent. “Probably getting married again,” he joked, and then he opened a glass door and steered them into a noisy seafood restaurant with sawdust on the floor and shouting waiters. Her father embraced the cashier; the owner was called for.…

  But for the rest of that night and well into the next week, Lydia was lost in a dream. Ava. Ava Gardner. She could’ve spoken to anyone, but she came to Lydia, knelt right in front of her, and gave her a flower. Lydia felt like she’d been touched by a goddess.

  Back home in Terrebonne, she riffled through her mother’s old Life magazines for photos and articles about the actress. When she exhausted those, she headed to the magazine rack at the drugstore. She begged her parents for money for the latest issue of Movie World, that week and then every week after. She learned all she could about Ava—her poor childhood, the sharecropper shacks, her tobacco-farming father, her homemade dresses, and her penchant for going barefoot, even after she’d been discovered and brought to Hollywood. She worried over the gossip she read and was dismayed by the studio’s new label for her, “The world’s most beautiful animal!” But she wasn’t an animal at all, Lydia argued to herself. Anybody could see what a sensitive, intelligent woman she was—much more an Elizabeth Taylor than a Marilyn Monroe. She was being horribly miscast by the studios; she deserved so much better than the silly roles they gave her.

  The movie she’d been filming that winter in New Orleans, My Forbidden Past, didn’t come out until two years later, when Lydia was still in junior high school. As soon as it opened at the RKO in New Orleans, Lydia coerced her parents into taking her to see it. She dressed carefully for the outing, feeling in a way that it was her movie, too, and she was nervous when the lights went down and the film began to play in the half-empty theater. Her father shifted impatiently in his seat and gobbled his popcorn and guffawed. Her mother complained in a whisper that this movie really wasn’t suitable for teenage girls. Even Lydia had to admit the film wasn’t that good. But Ava—Ava, of course, was wonderful. Lydia attended carefully to every raised eyebrow, every sigh and gesture, chuckling with recognition and saying to herself, That’s just like her. That’s just what Ava would do.

  “A special girl … an amazing life …”

  The encounter would stay with Lydia all through high school, where she became a mediocre student, prone to daydreaming. She was impatient with her teachers and quickly grew tired of her classmates, too, especially the FFA boys in overalls who teased her for putting on airs. “Miss Nose-in-the-Air,” they called her. “Miss Too-Good-for-You.” When she thought about it sensibly, she knew that there was nothing at all for her to be smug about. And yet, the notion had taken hold that Terrebonne was just a way station for her. She’d been dropped off there by mistake, and if she only waited it out, the next train would arrive soon to whisk her away. Surely she wasn’t meant to spend the rest of her life here in this muddy dump.

  The summer after graduation she got a job at the McCall’s Rexall. She’d been practically living at the shop anyway, going several times a week to read the movie magazines, and so when Trudy Arcineaux, the night girl, got pregnant and had to quit, Lydia barely had to turn around in order to take her place at the counter.

  She loved the job; it made her feel grown up and important. Being right there on the town square, waiting on customers behind the large plate-glass window, was almost like being on stage. She took special care with her makeup and wardrobe, and she set herself the task of improving her deportment and elocution. “Yes, ma’am, we can certainly order that for you,” she’d say, and, “If you don’t mind waiting for just one minute, I’ll ask the manager.” Even during her breaks, eating her sandwich in the park, she was unfailingly poised and polite, as if (a boy once teased her) she was expecting someone to pop out of a bush and take her picture. Mr. McCall had nothing but praise for her.

  She’d become a dedicated moviegoer by then, and on her nights off from work she drove with her girlfriends, or even by herself, to see the latest releases in Thibodaux or Houma. As she sat in the darkened theater, the dusty beam of light streaming over her shoulder seemed to cast her dreams up on the screen—dreams that were so private, so true, that she almost blushed to see them shown in public. Many times she had the overpowering conviction that it could’ve been her moving and talking up there in that silvery world. Indeed, she often felt that all it required was some intense act of concentration on her part—that if only she closed her eyes and squeezed her fists and wished it strongly enough, it would happen: all at once the beam would flip around to shine on her, and her life would be transformed. No longer just Lydia Marie Simoneaux from Terrebonne, she would become some greater, larger, brighter, more perfectly realized version of herself.

  And yet, things did not look promising for her. All the wealthiest, smartest boys of her class had gone off to college, and the ones that remained in town were the poor boys who would always be there: the sons of fishers and trappers with their muddy boots and batteaus, and now the oil-rig toughs in their pickup trucks and greasy blue jeans. And then a year had passed, and while her classmates were getting married and having babies, she was still restocking dinner mints at the counter in the Rexall, staring out the window at the world passing by and wondering when, oh when, the amazing life Ava had promised her would begin.

  Sometimes late at night before closing, when the store was empty and there was only the hum of the cooler and a faint buzz from the overhead fluorescent lights to disturb the silence, she would have the feeling that she was perched at the very edge of her dreams. She would stop whatever she was doing and lean on the counter, listening. A Gulf breeze rustled the leaves in the gutter; a train whistled on the outskirts of town. Possibility seemed to shiver in the air, like the electric sensation before a hurricane. Any minute now, she would tell herself, staring out the window, any min
ute now it would happen. It had to happen. She could feel it like a tingling beneath her skin. Any minute now, the bell would ring, the door would open, and her future would step in to greet her. He’d be wearing a suit and tie, and he’d ask in a polite, gentlemanly voice that sounded at once foreign but completely familiar, “Miss? Hello? Can you help me?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BY November we could spot Kohoutek easily near the head of Scorpio, visible in the lens of the scope as a faint blue teardrop-shaped smudge. From day to day it seemed not to move at all, but from week to week its progress was obvious. My father kept notes on its appearance and location, along with sketches to show the size of the coma and the shape of its tail. He compared his observations with those of other members of the regional American Astronomical Society, and he kept abreast of the more detailed scientific data available through regular bulletins issued by NASA. It had already passed Mars; around Thanksgiving it would cross the orbit of the Earth and brush past Venus and Mercury before looping around the Sun to begin its return pass through the solar system. Greatest magnitude was still predicted for late December and early January, when it would be nearest the Sun. Preliminary spectroscopic analysis revealed evidence of water in its makeup, and radio frequency radiation disclosed traces of hydrogen cyanide and methyl cyanide in its outgassing—discoveries that lent credence to the theory that Comet Kohoutek was indeed a relic from the origins of the solar system, “a messenger from the past,” as my father called it.

  Every night after his observations my father would fold up the telescope and return it to my room: “Night, son.” As soon as he was gone, I’d turn off my lights, set up the scope at my window, and train it on Gabriella’s house. I could spend an hour or more waiting for a glimpse of her. My back would ache, my neck would become sore; as I pulled away from the eyepiece, my vision would be blurry. But sometimes I was rewarded with a sighting, and that was enough to keep me watching.

  I’d catch her crossing through the patio room, or see her sitting on the couch to watch TV with her parents. Other times I would find her in her bedroom, her shadow flitting back and forth behind the curtains of the French doors. Sometimes the curtains would be open and I could watch her sitting inside, talking on the phone, moving in and out of her powder room. She always closed the curtains before going to bed at night, however—evidence, I thought, of a certain polite modesty that must’ve been taught to well-bred girls like her. Or maybe, I thought, she suspected me; maybe she knew I was watching.

  I felt vaguely uneasy spying on her like this, but at the same time, I reasoned, it didn’t seem to be hurting anybody. I thought of it as a kind of scientific study; I saw myself as another Dr. Kohoutek, perched up in the lonely observatory of my room, dedicating myself not to the investigation of heavenly bodies but of earthly ones. Through careful observations I might uncover truths not only about her, but about me, about us, about the world we lived in.

  I learned that she favored Tab cola in the can, for instance. I only once ever saw her eat ice cream, oddly enough, and that appeared to be strawberry. From five to six-thirty twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, she attended ballet lessons; her mother drove her there and back, and afterward she wore her black tights for the rest of the evening in the house.

  After dinner she usually watched TV for an hour or so with her father in the patio room. Two of her favorite shows were Sonny and Cher and The Partridge Family. When either of these came on, she would run from whatever corner of the house she was in and throw herself on the couch to watch. If her father made some comment or asked a question during the program, she would shush him with a wave of her arm. When the show ended, she’d stand and leave the room, jerking her hips and singing along to the closing theme song.

  Regarding her study habits, she most often liked to do her homework at the same time as she watched TV. She had little patience for studying, though, and was easily distracted, so that as she sat on the couch in front of the TV with her schoolbook in her lap, she might not turn a page for half an hour at a stretch. But on nights before tests she would haul herself up to her room, close the door, and sit cross-legged on her bed with her papers spread around her, frowning and chewing determinedly on her pencil. She only read books that were assigned in class; otherwise, she read magazines. She subscribed to Seventeen, like my sister used to, and when she received a new issue she would lie back in bed and study it more seriously than she did any of her textbooks.

  Her phone habits: She had a yellow Trimline Touch-Tone with an extra-long cord that allowed her to move it anywhere in her bedroom. I figured that she spoke about an hour a night for an average of roughly eight to ten hours per week on this phone. She made calls about twice as often as she received them. Once I saw her pick up the handset to call someone, then put it down, walk back and forth, pick it up again … She did this three times before making the call.

  I learned to recognize the different attitudes she assumed while speaking on the phone, and from these I was able to make educated guesses as to probable conversation partners. She had one fairly upright, polite, but happy posture that she adopted for certain calls she received once or twice a week around eight o’clock in the evening; often at the end of these conversations she would report down to her parents. I took this caller to be a grandmother or an aunt—a close relative back in Shreveport.

  When talking to girlfriends from school, however, she would bring the phone to her bed and lie down, sometimes hanging her head backward over the edge of the mattress so that I would worry about her becoming dizzy. Other times she would flop down on the yellow shag carpet to talk. Best of all was when she stood and paced the room. Holding the phone to her ear with one hand, she practiced ballet moves—walking pointy-toed, or dipping and rising in front of the mirror with one arm arched over her head.

  Through these observations I began to see her as less of a goddess and more of a person. She was funny, thoughtful, at times awkward. She was, in fact, someone not so different from me: a human being trapped inside a teenager’s body, waiting for the world to begin.

  I came to learn more about Gabriella’s parents, too. Her father, for instance, preferred the patio room for relaxing in at the end of the day. I reasoned that this was because the patio room was the most open and casual room in the house, and Frank Martello himself was an open and casual person. He drank his beer straight from the bottle, no matter how often Barbara brought him a glass, and on Sunday afternoons he took over in the kitchen, stripping down to T-shirt and trousers, to cook a large pot of spaghetti and meatballs for the family. Other afternoons he joined the gardener in picking up twigs in the yard, and from time to time he uncoiled the garden hose and washed down his driveway himself. He’d stand in his business suit spraying water on the concrete until Barbara came out to berate him for working outside in his good clothes; he’d finish his spraying and, reluctantly it seemed, recoil the hose and go inside.

  Barbara’s daily routine was still largely a mystery to me, but I knew that she always brought Gabriella to school in the mornings and picked her up in the afternoons in her sky-blue Town Car. Whenever I caught sight of Barbara, whether coming and going in the car or moving around inside the house, she was always nicely dressed, as though ready to meet company. She favored skirts and high-heeled shoes, and she spoke with an experienced, offhanded authority to their maid and gardener; she seemed to be a woman used to having things her way. On the weekends the whole family would sometimes disappear for a day or two, and then their house would stand quiet and abandoned, the shutters closed and the curtains drawn, the automatic pool sweep gliding around and around the sparkling blue water of their swimming pool.

  The more I observed them, the better I knew them, until we seemed to be almost on familiar terms. I was, in a manner of speaking, a regular visitor to their house, following them home in the afternoon, and then settling in to watch TV with them in the evening, and then going upstairs to sit beside Gabriella on her bed as she did her homework or spo
ke on the phone. Soon I was spending more time with the Martellos than I was with my own family, and for good reason: their family was altogether more interesting and attractive than mine. I supposed the Martellos must’ve had their share of problems, but I never saw them; from where I stood, they looked all but perfect—like one of the charmed, well-lit families on the TV programs that Gabriella loved to watch.

  Sometimes when Gabriella went out for the night with her family or friends, I’d turn the Celestron aside and pull my chair up to the window to wait for her return. During these long drowsy vigils, I would dream of meeting her again as we had on that night in my yard, but alone now, just the two of us. We would step out of our separate rooms and, like weightless astronauts on a space walk, wade through the air above our yards to meet in the dark sky above the bayou. Suspended there between the stars above and the Earth below, I would take her hand and we would soar together into the future, that unimaginable, that beautiful, perfect world.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  FOR our fall field trip to Baton Rouge, our class would visit the planetarium, tour the state capital, and see the museum before returning to Terrebonne in the afternoon.

  The summer heat had broken at last and a clean, leafy scent was in the air. The change of seasons seemed to mark our own changes; we could all feel it, like a promise in the wind—the slipping away of our youth and the oncoming rush of adulthood. It caused students to talk more loudly and move more broadly. I’d noticed the change myself that morning when I went to put on my lightweight jacket and discovered that the sleeves were too short, as though I’d miraculously grown several inches overnight.

  I’d been looking forward to the field trip as a chance to get closer to Gabriella, but Mark Mingis had gotten the jump on me. While we were boarding the bus at school, he slipped around everyone else, jogged up the steps, and dropped down next to her, as casually as if he belonged there. He sat beside her now, resting his arm along the back of her seat. The wind tossed her hair around her shoulders. Creosote poles ticked past the windows, and the morning sun glinted off patches of water as our bus rumbled north along Highway 1.