Chapter Eleven
Morse code message reading “ad astra per aspera” —“through struggle to the stars”: Sounds of Earth
We were in the part of August where, in the Northwest, there was heat and wildfire smoke.
It didn’t used to be this way, Mom said as she looked at the sun, which had turned into an eerie red sphere on the horizon.
Flakes of ash could be seen on windshields and skylights.
I tied a bandanna around my face to do the deliveries, and at the end of the day, my hair smelled like smoke, my clothes, too.
We had to keep the windows shut tight, sweltering inside, a claustrophobic doom descending, seeing the apocalyptic air out there.
The Center for Wooden Boats stayed open, but when I went to see you there, Peapod, Whitehall, Sid Skiff, and Lightning were oddly still tied up to the dock, and only Pelican could be seen bobbing on Lake Union.
Alone on the lake, it looked so odd, so vulnerable, with that colored sail in that strange orange-gray smoke-sky, a hopeful little voyager on the inhospitable Sea of Tranquility.
We went to the houseboat after your shift, remember?
When we walked in, we were both surprised to see the shiny foil gift bag on the coffee table, with a note that just read For Margaret.
It was from your mom. It was from your mom!
That’s how I felt—the hope of the exclamation point.
I fished around the crumpled tissue paper and pulled out the candle.
It was purple, and smelled…purple? It had a Mystic Minerals price tag on the bottom, and a label that read Season of Serenity.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s so nice!” I felt happy.
I kept sniffing it, thinking it was a message, the Season of Serenity thing, like she was telling me we were entering a new phase.
So silly. That’s what we do, when we badly want something, don’t we?
We pile on the other person’s intentions, when they sometimes don’t have any or have entirely different ones.
You, though…Your face was unreadable. You shrugged, as if you’d seen this before.
I put the candle back in the bag. Maybe it didn’t mean what I thought.
You took my hand, and we went into your room. In that small space with the windows shut, even kissing felt too close and sticky. You turned your fan on, and there was one whirling in the living room and kitchen, too, but they just shifted the stifling air around.
“I’m dying,” you said.
“Too hot,” I agreed. “Poor Carl, in that turtleneck.” In that frame, Carl Sagan really did look hot as he stared at our half-naked selves with his kind eyes.
“Did I ever tell you? About the photo NASA wouldn’t allow on the record?
A naked couple, just standing there holding hands.
Carl and the team tried to pick the most inoffensive one possible, to show what human bodies look like.
They’re just standing there, calm, smiling at each other.
The dude has a tan line; that’s my favorite part. ”
“But NASA wouldn’t let them include it?”
“They were worried about public outcry or something. They decided to keep the silhouette of them anyway, because, how do you show what it’s like to be human without showing humans, you know?”
“Let’s just play it and hang out in front of the fan. You’ve only shared pieces. I want to hear the whole thing.” The record, I meant. We’d never actually just listened to it beginning to end, which suddenly seemed like a strange empty space in our history.
“Really? The whole-whole thing? It’s ninety minutes. You’re probably going to think some parts are boring. Or just odd. The UN guy talking with whale songs in the background…”
“That’s totally not boring. Can you get us something to drink?” It was a scorching desert planet in there.
“Yeah! Of course!” You hopped up. This made you so happy, I could tell. That I wanted to hear something that you loved this much. “You don’t think I’m weird about all this?”
“Of course I think you’re weird.”
You swatted my butt. “You’re weird.”
“I love weird,” I called. You were already in the kitchen, clanking ice into glasses.
So, we did just that—sat on the floor in front of the fan in the living room, listening to the Golden Record over your mom’s old speakers, the giant kind people used to have before we learned that bigger wasn’t always better.
We listened to the mesmerizing greetings in fifty-five languages, cheerful and somehow sweet, ending with the tender “Hello from the children of planet Earth,” spoken by Carl Sagan’s little boy Nick.
We smiled at each other. I felt surprisingly choked up.
That child made me want to cry and rejoice at the same time.
His voice, you know, it was spinning above us a jillion miles away. He was a grown man now.
Then came the UN guy with the eerie whale songs in the background, just like you warned me.
“Will the aliens think whales are singing behind us all the time?” I asked you.
“I wish they were,” you said. “But the whale songs were there to show that we aren’t the only intelligent creatures on Earth. Right, Frank?” In the kitchen, Frank’s ear twitched. He was lying on the cool tile in front of the refrigerator. He knew a compliment when he heard one.
After the UN guy, the eerie, unsettling Sounds of Earth began: volcanoes, crickets, hyenas, storms; so much scary howling wind, and the drilling of tools and helicopters, footsteps, laughter, a kiss.
A baby crying, a mom soothing, the rat-a-tat fire of brain waves.
There were no introductions or explanations between them.
It was like being lost and alone in a capsule of our planet, awash and disoriented with noise.
Transported from a frightening jungle in the deepest, darkest night to a harsh, frenzied city, to the warring clatter from the depths of a body, sounds that vibrated in my own body, the heartbeat becoming my heartbeat.
You poked me. I realized I’d been transfixed, concentrating so hard to decipher the sounds and staring at that blue crystal your mom had brought home, set on your television.
I hadn’t expected Sounds of Earth to be so unnerving.
They were scary, honestly—a swirling reminder of all we were up against. When you took my hand, I was glad for it.
I realized something huge then: That wasn’t on the record, you know.
How a hand could make our world feel more bearable.
A hand was silent. Companionship and love were.
It was a relief to move on to the music.
The music brought a reprieve from all that was scary in the whirl of gurgling pots and shrieking chimpanzees, the crumbling rocks and wild, howling dogs.
I understood why we needed it so bad, music, how it brought joy to what was overwhelming, and a rhythm to what was chaotic.
Sounds of Earth—it was the Earth and the people on it being, but the music conveyed what it felt like to be.
We listened to the mystical “Kinds of Flowers,” and the lively Senegal percussion “Tchenhoukoumen.” But when we got to “El Cascabel,” the mariachi song, you stood, pulling me up with you.
You started dancing, shirtless, and I joined you.
How could anyone not dance to that song?
Even the aliens would, I thought, and we shimmied and bobbed and moved our hips.
Sweat dripped down my face as the strange red sun sat in the gray sky, and ash fell down like snow around us.
“Sharpies for the win,” I said, plunking two packages into the cart, which was parked in the school supplies aisle of Fred Meyer. “I love Sharpies.”
“They always make a bold statement,” Addison said as she perused the notebooks.
“You could write fart and it would seem important,” Liam said.
I snort-laughed, and it was funny, but I wished he weren’t with us.
Addison had said we’d go alone, but when she came to pick me up, he was in the front seat, and I had to sit in the back.
Her eyes beamed an apology, and I shrugged an It’s fine, but I was annoyed.
They held hands in the store, which made it hard to even navigate the aisles, and now we wouldn’t try on clothes like we planned.
“He asked if he could come, too, and I couldn’t say no!” Addison whispered as Liam lingered in front of the non-graphing calculators.
“You’ve been saying we haven’t been doing stuff, just us.
And this is our tradition.” Well, honestly, our tradition for only the past two years before, when we could get our school supplies ourselves.
And, too—I still hadn’t introduced her to you.
It wasn’t fair, to keep people away and then be mad at them for being away.
“Mars could have come.” Her voice was icy.
She got that raised-eyebrow look she always had when she knew she was right.
We’d been in the store for a solid forty-five minutes already, but I hadn’t really seen her.
I hadn’t really taken her in, but now I did.
Her hair had grown longer, and there were these beautiful coppery tints in her blond that I’d never noticed before.
Her body seemed different, too. I couldn’t exactly describe how, only, maybe more mature.
Like, I could think of her more like a young woman in front of me in a line at Starbucks, instead of Addison who hid with me behind the school during field day.
We both hated field day, with the relay races that involved running in tires like we were in the army instead of in sixth grade.