The Sun and Other Stars

by Brigid Pasulka

  “Yuri?”

  He mumbles something unintelligible, maybe even in Ukrainian, I don’t know.

  “What did you say?”

  He picks his head up. “I say, maybe I should have never left village.” And he lets his head sink down again.

  I pick up the remote, put the sound on low, and switch it to the Disney Channel. The alarm downstairs chirps, and Papà appears at the top of the stairs. I expect him to look as tired as Yuri. Instead, he seems invigorated, his face ruddy, his eyes bright from the sea air.

  “Have you been down to the shop?” he asks.

  “Not yet.”

  “We’re lucky. Only a little bit of water, and the power never went out. We only have to figure out what to do with all that food from the festa.”

  “Maybe bring some up to Nonna’s today?”

  “Ach. Nonno would never allow that. Especially if there are guests.”

  “Guests?”

  “Where else would they go?”

  “What about the semifinals and finals?”

  “Postponed. The field is soaked anyway. . . . Come on, Yuri. Hup, hup. I told Silvio you and I would go around and check on the old people and make sure they’re okay. No power outages or anything. Hopefully you won’t give them a heart attack when you show up at their door.”

  “What about Nonna?” I ask.

  “Nonno is taking her to church this morning. . . . Come on, Yuri.” He claps his hands together with the inexhaustible energy that used to annoy us when we were kids. “Let’s go. Better to be busy when these things happen. Trust me.”

  Yuri rouses himself from the chair. “I will wake Zhuki.”

  “Let Zhuki sleep. Etto can watch the kids.”

  “I can?”

  “You can.”

  Papà and Yuri leave, and I make myself a coffee and stand out on the balcony, listening to The Lion King songs cycling through in the background. Outside, the streets look like biblical times, sand covering the passeggiata, dead fish and palm fronds lying everywhere. The tourists are stepping around the destruction in a daze, snapping pictures. I can see the crowd gathering around Martina’s even from here.

  I go back in and sit down on the sofa, and Little Yuri and Principessa arrange themselves next to me. The Lion King is about halfway through, and Principessa starts to shift around, pressing her hands into my thigh as she rearranges herself.

  “When are we going home?” Little Yuri asks.

  “Probably this afternoon.”

  “Is that your bedroom we were sleeping in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you have two beds?”

  “I had a brother.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s not here anymore.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He died.”

  “And then where did he go?”

  “Where everybody goes. Heaven.” But I can already tell, I’m not selling this kid on it.

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Of course I know. He’s in heaven.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Okay, I don’t know, all right? But it makes me feel better, and it’s a lot easier to explain to you than the alternatives.”

  “So he could be anywhere, then. He could be under this sofa. He could be out in space. He could be in Ukraine.”

  “When did you get so chatty?”

  “What’s ‘chatty’?”

  “Let’s just watch television, okay?”

  Zhuki eventually comes down, and as we get the kids ready to go up to Nonna and Nonno’s, I pretend that we are a young family off to visit the grandparents. When we arrive, Yuri and Papà are already there, and Ihor and Mykola soon return from the villa to report that Tatiana and Vanni left an hour ago in Vanni’s Maserati. Nonna has made a tableful of food, and as we pass it around, Papà plays koo-koo with Principessa behind his napkin as if we get together with the Ukrainians every Sunday.

  When I was a kid, I remember thinking that the universe was composed of families like ours, perfect bubbles floating around in space, and inside your family’s bubble, you developed your private jokes and your family stories. You were lucky if it lasted, but once your bubble popped, it was gone. Never once did it cross my mind that you could become a part of someone else’s bubble, or that two half bubbles could match up to make a whole. A complete whole. Since I woke up this morning, I’ve felt the presence of Mamma and Luca, not in the empty chairs or the absences, but in our togetherness. As we listen to Nonno recap the history of water trumpets in the region, or as we talk about the World Cup next year, or watch Little Yuri and Principessa run around the yard, Mamma and Luca are here as sure as we all are.

  How do I know, you ask?

  I don’t.

  The afternoon stretches, and we drink our digestivos in the yard under the lemon tree. The air is hot and humid, but the branches shade us from the sun, and the leaves help generate a light breeze.

  “What kind of tree is this anyway?” Zhuki asks.

  “Lemon.”

  “Why are there no lemons?”

  “Ach,” Nonno says. “It is the fault of the man who owned this villa before us. He never cleaned or trimmed his land, only left it dirty year after year.”

  Yuri has been near-catatonic for the entire afternoon, the conversation ricocheting around him. But now he leans back in his chair, squinting and frowning at the branches as if this is the very first tree in the world, the one that led to his demise.

  “I’ve tried everything,” Nonno continues, “but once a tree is barren for so long, there is nothing you can do. It simply forgets how to grow.” And Nonno starts listing all the measures he has taken to try to bring life back to the tree.

  I’ve heard it a million times before, but I listen politely, and it’s only out of the corner of my eye that I see Yuri reach his arm up in slow motion, like a Sky Sport replay, up, up into the mess of branches, unfurling his fingers into the shiny leaves.

  “What are those?” Yuri says.

  “Where?” Nonno stands up and examines the tree, and sure enough, there’s a small cluster of pale-purple buds. And do you know how when you see something once, you get the pattern in your eye and you start to see it all over? That’s exactly what happens, and soon, all of us are out of our chairs, examining every branch of the tree.

  “Right there.”

  “And there.”

  “Over here.”

  “Here’s one.”

  Nonno is as excited as I’ve seen him for any match. “Maradona! Maradona! Lemons! Lemons!”

  Zhuki beams, lifting our Principessa up to see, our Little Yuri holding on to her pocket as he gazes up and waits his turn.

  Pescara is not so far.

  Bari is not so far.

  Everton, even, is not so far.

  For the next few days, the Ukrainians are trapped in the villa as the paparazzi swarm outside. I SMS Zhuki and tell her I can deliver anything they need, but she says they are fine. As the days stretch with no gossip about their evacuation, I start to think that maybe there’s a chance they will stay, at least until October. But that dream is shattered on Wednesday morning, when I find myself staring into the cold screen of my phone, the bottom dropping out of my stomach like a trap door.

  CAN YOU MEET ME AT THE FIELD TONIGHT?

  She’s waiting for me on the fifth-year bench. The moon is waning, the horns pointed to the right, casting an eerie glow onto the sea. Even in the dim light, I can tell she’s been crying.

  “What is it?” I say.

  She wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand and looks away. I remember one time Professoressa Gazzolo started crying in front of us in class, the day after she found out her boyfriend in Sanremo had left her for an eighteen-year-old girl. We’d already heard the story, and of course, Fede had been with the girl six months before, so we kept telling her not to cry, that the girl was a cow anyway, but she couldn’t stop. And worse, she kept saying, “Sorry, sorry,”
because she didn’t want to cry over this guy, either, and because she was embarrassed to be crying in front of her students in the first place even though, I have to say, it’s not often you see that kind of humanity in a school.

  Anyway, I get the same feeling watching Zhuki—that it would be less embarrassing for her to stand naked in front of all of San Benedetto than cry in front of me.

  “What is it?” I say again. I sit down on the end of the bench. I’m scared to touch her, to release whatever she’s going to say next.

  “We’re moving to Chicago.”

  “What?”

  I can feel the universe rushing outward and stretching the space between us, the gulf widening between our bodies. I can feel the atoms pulling apart, the gaps filling with dark energy and dark matter.

  “He’s being transferred at the end of the month. They’re in the middle of their season, and there’s a good chance he won’t even be able to play right away because of the ban. But he will be able to practice, and to keep his place on the Ukrainian national team.” She wipes her nose on her sleeve and keeps talking. “We have an aunt in Chicago. I’ve met her. She’s nice. Principessa will be able to learn English. She was too young when we were in Glasgow. . . .”

  “They have calcio in Chicago?”

  “They have soccer.”

  “Is it the same thing?”

  “I guess so.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  The words fly up and perch on the horns of the moon like a hawk eyeing us, and she presses her hands into the bench as if she wants to vault herself off it and run away.

  “Don’t go,” I say. She turns to look at me, her face half lit, split down the middle. “Don’t go. Stay here. In San Benedetto. We could find you a job, an apartment . . . everything.”

  She stares at me for a long time, and I hold my breath.

  “I’m sorry, Etto. I have to go.”

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “You don’t understand the stress my brother is under. He needs me. Little Yuri and Principessa need me.”

  No one will ever believe me if I tell them this story. No one will ever believe I have such palle forged of steel. “I need you,” I say.

  The crease appears between her eyes. I haven’t seen it since the days after the disco. “You’re not making this easy, Etto.”

  “I don’t want to make it easy. Cazzo . . . Chicago? Couldn’t he find anything closer?”

  “The transfer window was closing. America was all that was left.”

  Great. My fate is in the hands of a fottuto calcio schedule.

  “Look, Etto. I like you. A lot. But let’s be rational. How long have we known each other? A couple of months? This is my brother. The brother who saved me from this awful situation with my mother’s boyfriend. The brother who got me out of Strilky. He’s the only one I have left. I thought you of all people would understand that. And now you are asking me to choose between him and you?”

  “I’m not asking you to choose between him and me. I’m asking you to choose between him and you. You love those kids, I know, but they’re not your kids. Your brother’s calcio career is not yours. Your brother’s life is not your life.”

  The furrow between her eyebrows deepens. I look down and realize that this whole time, I’ve been rubbing her fingers like a talisman. She pulls her hand away.

  “Etto, this is my life. Maybe it seems stupid and small to you, like I am only following after my brother like a puppy. But it is my life, and those people you are talking about are my family. And they would do anything for me just as I would do anything for them.”

  I know. I know. You can never win a breakup you don’t want in the first place. But I keep going. Rome or death.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Her face darkens, and I can almost see the gate rolling down over it. “I’m going, Etto. I didn’t want to end like this, but I’m going.” She stands up and gives me two perfunctory pecks on the cheek, a chaste punishment for my passion that feels like the final two screws in my coffin.

  “I thought you understood me,” she says.

  Ouch.

  She disappears up the hill, and just like that it’s over, flaring and burning out like a comet you wait a lifetime for, leaving only darkness, the sea, and silence.

  By Thursday morning, the streets are clean and the beaches are open again, but no one is allowed in the water because of the bacteria counts. Some of the tourists have cut their vacations short and gone home, but most of them have been wandering around the town like we have, restless and unsettled. Fede comes across the passeggiata midmorning as I’m taking a smoke break. Yes, I’m smoking again. Judge away.

  “I just heard,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  I shrug.

  “Do you think you’ll still have contact with her?”

  I shake my head. “It didn’t end so well.”

  “Maybe you can call her.”

  I shrug again. “What’s the point?”

  Fede stares at me, but I can see his concentration drifting. He squints over my shoulder in the direction of Martina’s bar.

  “Is that . . . Signor Cato?”

  I turn to look, and sure enough, Signor Cato is running toward us down the passeggiata, his skinny legs pumping, his white hair flickering in the air like fire. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him move a muscle other than his mouth or his index finger clicking on the mouse, and now, here he is, running down the passeggiata.

  “Where’s your papà?” he gasps.

  “He’s upstairs. What’s wrong?”

  “Martina’s gone.”

  “What?”

  “She’s gone. A few of us went looking for her to see if she’d serve us a coffee in the open air. We buzzed and buzzed. She’s not answering her door. Her neighbor said he hasn’t seen her since yesterday morning.”

  I get Chicca to watch the shop, and Papà, Signor Cato, Fede, and I walk over to Martina’s apartment, where she’s lived alone since her bastard-of-a-cafone-of-a-husband left her five or six years ago. Papà knocks but there’s no answer.

  “Martina?” He uses his key. I hold my breath and expect the worst.

  “Martina? Are you there?” The echo follows us as we check the other rooms.

  “Where do you think she went?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can’t believe she wouldn’t tell us.”

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “I’ll go talk to Silvio,” Papà says.

  “I’ll ask around the bagni,” Fede says.

  They both hurry off. I head back toward the shop, and I’m about twenty meters down the passeggiata when I remember Signor Cato, who is still standing in front of Martina’s apartment building, staring up at the windows. He has no place to go. No wife, no Wi-Fi. He probably doesn’t even have a coffeemaker at home.

  “What are you going to do today, Signor Cato?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can sit up in our apartment if you want.”

  “Do you have a computer?”

  “No. But we have coffee. And I can buy you a newspaper.”

  He thinks about it. “You know what? I think I will sit out on the molo today.”

  I watch him through the front windows of the shop for the rest of the morning. Once upon a time, he spent all his days out there. He was the last official fisherman in San Benedetto, docking his boat along the molo decades longer than anyone else had been allowed to, until the year Gubbio forced him to either join the marina or pay a docking tax, which Signor Cato loudly decried as the equivalent of choosing between Scylla and Charybdis, though he didn’t quite use those words. And rather than give in to Gubbio, he decided to sink his boat himself, loudly and dramatically. Mamma, Luca, and me were among a small crowd watching as he stood on the boat and gave his speech, violently chopping a hole in the bottom with an ax, only diving off the prow once bubbles the size of a man
’s head began gurgling up around him. I remember the bite of Mamma’s bangles as we stood there, the scratchiness of the piece of fishing net against my wrist, her hand tightening around mine while we waited for him to surface.

  For a while afterward, Signor Cato would go out on the molo to fish, and he and Mamma would often meet in the early mornings, Mamma in her wet suit, Signor Cato with his tackle box and pole. Now he looks stiff and out of place, his back rigid against one of the benches. People greet him like they haven’t seen him in a decade, and the ones who haven’t been to Martina’s maybe haven’t. A few of the other regulars from Martina’s join him, and the waiters along the passeggiata bring out trays of coffee. Each time I look out the window, the crowd seems to have grown.

  At noon, The Band wanders by, playing the Ferragosto dirge that was postponed due to the storm, but they, too, drop their instruments to their sides and join the growing pack of men. Even the Mangona brothers take turns abandoning their kiosks to see what’s going on. And to any untrained eye, the same thing is going on that has always been going on whenever two or more are gathered in San Benedetto—moving mouths and flying hands pulling air into air, crafting grand plans from nothing and into nothing.

  Papà comes back to the shop with Silvio. “What’s going on out there?” he says.

  “Who knows?”

  They join the crowd, which has grown to about thirty now, their hands synchronized, turning like eagles in the air. All at once, they get up and start moving in the direction of Martina’s, gliding like a pool of mercury, absorbing more people as they advance. Mimmo, Franco, Dura from Naples, Father Marco, Pete the Comb Man. Only Papà breaks off and hurries back to the shop.

  “We’re rebuilding Martina’s.”

  “You’re what?”

  “We’re rebuilding Martina’s. All of us. Casella and his papà are going to order everything wholesale, Father Marco is going to set up a collection box at the church, Signor Cavalcanti will donate a new flat-screen, and all the retired men will work on it. Dura used to be a bricklayer, you know.”

  “Shouldn’t you ask Martina about this?”

  “Mino said he saw her get on the train with a giant suitcase yesterday morning. He asked her where she was going and do you know what she said?”