Chapter Twenty-Three #3
The bed was still in place, stripped of its sheets and cover, just a bare mattress.
Boxes were strewn around in there, too. Only one or two had reached the point of being taped up and labeled; the others spilled clothes and school papers and books.
The most prominent thing in your room, your Voyager poster, had been taken down, but it was now lying on the floor, the universe upside down and at my feet, only the pinholes remaining in the wall where it had hung.
That Golden Record replica that Sandrine had given you was gone; there was now just a nail hole, minus the nail.
Your shelves were still up, and an attempt had been made to pack them, but the task had been abandoned.
I could see your astronomy volumes in an open box, but the shells and rocks, that laminated ticket to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, the Sky Glider card from your friend, Ella, your baby photo with your mom, and all the others of your California friends were still there.
But you know what broke my heart? The most?
Carl Sagan’s photo in the frame. It was on your nightstand, and Carl was still gazing in the direction of your bed, now just a blue satiny mattress with a sagging you-imprint in the center.
Carl—it was like he was speaking to me. You were; everyone and everything was. Ms. Costa, and the photographs with meaning, too, because I realized I was looking at both ten thousand records and a single one.
I removed my phone from my pocket. I opened the camera and took a photo of that Voyager poster.
Next I took photos of photos, the ones you treasured, of your friends, and baby you and your mom.
I snapped a shot of that Santa Cruz Boardwalk ticket key chain, and the Sky Gliders card.
The shells and the rocks and everything else on your shelves.
And, of course, Carl Sagan in the frame.
Right then, it was all just for me. What was coming was still in the unknowable future.
I was just trying to hold on to you, to keep you, to show what had mattered.
Your mom said I could have something. I moved to the box of your shirts.
You always see this in a movie, the person smelling the missing loved one’s shirt, but that’s what I did.
I actually did that very same thing, with the shirt on the top of the pile, a blue flannel one.
I remember you in it once or twice, and I held it to my face.
I closed my eyes. I inhaled until I couldn’t smell you anymore.
“Margaret?” Janite’s voice called out in suspicion.
We were already past the romantic hand-holding portion of our relationship.
She stood in the doorway, her eyebrows folded down.
I wished I could love her like you had, Mars.
We could have had an ongoing connection to you together, then, but this would never, could never, happen.
Not when we were some weird, hard-to-understand rivals.
“I’m here.” Not entirely true. It was all so surreal.
We looked at each other, her in the doorway, me by that box. I needed to apologize to her. I badly wanted to be forgiven for the wrongdoing I carried, but I couldn’t speak.
“Is that what you want?”
I was still holding your shirt. I just stared at her, drowning.
She rubbed its sleeve. “I guess you can have it.”
“Oh! Thank you.” I almost wished I could look through that box, though.
I maybe would have chosen your yellow sweatshirt, the one you wore when we first met, or your favorite T-shirt with the retro rocket blasting skyward, or the heather-blue one from our time in the forest. I couldn’t bear the thought of your clothes staying jammed and meaningless in that box, or worse, disappearing somewhere, into the great sea of used clothes, looking like just another T-shirt when none of them were.
These thoughts, you know, they could build to a panic if I wasn’t careful.
“Great,” Janite said. The way she leaned in that door with her arms folded, I understood that we were done.
“Wait.”
It was here, the moment. My chance to ask her if you had gotten that text. If you knew, before you left, without a doubt, that I loved you. I looked in her eyes as she stood there. And I saw that they did not go on and on. They stopped at a blaze of pain.
Oh, God. It wasn’t possible right then, okay? To connect, to take that chance to ask. There was just no way. We were a fire wall and a wall of fire. I moved my eyes to Carl’s then, seeking comfort.
“You want that?”
She misunderstood my gaze. She saw longing, which was so true. But yes, yes! I wanted it so bad, Carl in the frame. His comfort that was your comfort. I wanted his help, even. And with that thought, right there, this idea, this plan, began to form. “If it’s okay. If you don’t mind.”
She waved her hand, whatever. I picked up the frame and held it close. How well did she know you, if she didn’t understand the importance of that photo to you? I’m sorry I even asked that. It’s petty. I really am sorry.
She held her fingers to her necklace, rubbed an amethyst crystal hanging on a chain. “Did I tell you?”
I shook my head. She hadn’t told me anything, so it was a safe answer.
“The clock in my room. It stopped at nine-fifteen. Like, months ago. But that’s right when he died. The exact same time.”
“Wow. That’s unbelievable,” I said. Maybe unbelievable, literally.
No one was with you. Who could be sure of the exact minute?
Could I blame her, though? I wasn’t any different.
Everything seemed like a sign. When the sun was out, you were sending a message, and when the moon shined down, you were.
When I once saw a comet, for sure. It was right over our house, and I thanked you.
I needed a sign. You were so quiet.
A phone began to ring. Muffled. It was coming from that box of clothes. Of course, maybe that was a sign, a call from your box of clothes just as I had the thought about your silence.
“My phone! There it is! I’ve been looking everywhere!
” Janite flung the clothes from the box.
One after the other, your flannel shirts were in the air, and then there it was, the T-shirt with the rocket.
God, I wanted it. I wanted every single one.
I wanted the shoes and the socks, even the worn-out flip-flop that now lay on the floor.
Janite held the phone up victoriously. “I’ve got to get this. It’s Jake.”
“Thank you,” I said, holding up the blue flannel and the frame. She waved me off again.
I made my way through the disarray of the living room.
I’d never be in that place again, and I gave it a final look, and that’s when I saw the urn on the mantel.
I’d never seen an urn that held ashes before, but I instantly understood what it was.
Gray stone, with a lid. It looked large and heavy, but not large or heavy enough to hold you, my Mars.
I couldn’t understand it, that jar. It made no sense to me, what became of you.
I closed the door behind me. Goodbye, I said, goodbye. But this wasn’t where you were.
It’s where you had been, but you’d been everywhere. You’d been in the houseboat, and on the dock I was now walking on, and you’d been in my arms, and your breath had been in the air, and your feet on the Earth, and your eyes on that sky.
Your eyes had met those eyes, every night before you closed them. The eyes of that dude in the turtleneck, Carl Sagan, Mr. Rogers of the cosmos. Those compassionate eyes that would now meet mine every night before I closed them.
I could see it, even in the photo, how Carl Sagan’s eyes went on and on.
You are special, I said to the photo, and the dock, and my arms, and the air, and the Earth, and the sky, everywhere you once were.