One Day the Wind Changed (3 page)

as if unsure of his needs. Body or soul, young man. Stir yourself.

“I think it would be neat to live here,” the girl says. “It's always pleasant and warm, but you think you're outside when the stars are on. It would be like camping out in a room.”

“Yes, it
is
like that, a little.”

“I'm Anna.”

“Hello, Anna. I'm Adam.”

“I know.” She points at my name tag. “It's a very nice name.”

“Thank you.”

The teacher—Ms. Pickett, I hear the kids call her—tries to gather her class at the Star Room's entrance, a curved, blue-painted portal with a velvet curtain. “People! People!” she says, waving her hands. “The show's about to start.” The lilt in her voice-a charming, almost—whistle—reminds me of a Mayan flute. The curator of our sister institution, the Dollman Natural History Museum, once removed such a flute from its case, after hours, when the two of us sat in the building sharing a bottle of scotch. Last year, before the museum was closed, we commiserated over gutted budgets and the trustees' pressure on us to provide more “upbeat” shows.

The flute, made of clay, was as hard as petrified wood, but it sang like the wind. Its sweetness echoed down the museum's dark halls. We raised our tumblers, quoted ancient poetry, and toasted history's delights. Now the building is shut, and Bowers, the curator, a nice if drifty fellow, has moved on.

Frank Wilkins, chair of the Board of Trustees, warned me that the solar system could be packed up as quickly as the Indians if I didn't do something soon to attract bigger crowds.

Whistle, Ms. Pickett! Call the scattered children. Will you be my siren, my gorgeous pied piper? I'm healthy (relatively), young (relatively), early forties with a bothersome wheeze. Still, if you don't look too closely—

But she's wearing a wedding band. Overworked and harried. No doubt she has money woes of her own, at her school.

The constellations tell amazing stories of rescue. In today's show, I'll point out Aries the Ram and inform the children how, in Roman mythology, Phrixus and his sister Helle escaped his black-hearted stepmother on the back of the beast-but for me, this fine day, no savior.

Listen to me. My thoughts always race before a presentation. It doesn't matter how often I've addressed the public. This afternoon, I'm edgier than usual because last week on the phone Frank mentioned he might drop by before today's show. I know what's on his mind, and I don't want to talk to him.

The kids settle into their seats. It's clear who the poor, friendless children are, slumped and silent, like my friend Zero whenever
he
shows up (thank God I haven't seen him today). I blow into the microphone to test it. A low hiss: the cool mistral, cycling in from the north, stirring memory, stirring ghosts.

A pair of brothers wheezing at night, listening to the wind on the plains, reading to each other (adventure tales, ancient myths) when they couldn't fall asleep, and two loving parents who served as their compass points. Viewed from the bedroom window, the stars were our steadiest companions, because, asthmatic, we couldn't play outdoors without losing our breath to the dust in the air.

I remember, one morning, walking to church with Mother and our grandmother. The sky was red with dirt from the roads. Marty and I had to stop to use our inhalers. Our grandmother was temperamentally unhappy, her frown never greater than when she praised the joys of the Lord. Watching us struggle, she said to our mother, “How did you manage to raise two such damaged kids?” Immediately she apologized for the remark—miserable old woman—but Mother was in no mood to accept her regret. We didn't make it to church that day.

That evening, Mother stood with Marty and me at our bedroom window. Marty fought me for space. “Get back, you little creep!” he hissed. Mother made peace between us. She taught us a funny saying, to recall the names of the planets: “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles. Remember those first letters, okay, and you'll know your way around.” She told us the sky was a wondrous bazaar, full of goods we could buy if we saved enough coins.

“How much does the moon cost?” I asked.

“And the sun?” Marty said.

“Five cents apiece,” Mother answered. She pointed at a cold red star in the south sky. “A ruby ring. And that yellow one? Saffron, to spice up our food.” The Milky Way was a fan of peacock feathers, she said. It was hard to take my eyes off it. Behind us, my bedside radio played a quiet tune. The horizon was flat in all directions. “You are the very best boys,” Mother whispered, her voice as pretty as the music. She kissed us each on the ear. “Don't listen to your grandma, okay? Sometimes life isn't fair. But you know what?”

“What?” Marty said.

“You've got each other, right?” Sometimes she sounded as corny to me as the song lyrics on my radio, but that didn't matter. I loved her
and KOMA-“Stay right where you are! You've got the
Voice
of Oklahoma City!'

“And you know what else?”

“What else?” I said.

“You can have anything you want. Just wish for it.” We scanned the sky until our father came into the room to tell us a bedtime story.

My story today, tailored especially for the children, touches on distance and time. I'm ready to draw the curtain and start the music (what would stir the teacher, I wonder—piano solos, a rousing march?) when Frank, always punctual, walks in the door. He motions to me. “Excuse me,” I tell the kids. “Back in a flash. In the meantime, why don't you try to locate yourselves using the directional markers at the base of the dome-north, south, east, west. That way, you'll be oriented when the sun sets.” They stare at me as though I've greeted them in Chinese.

In the hall, Frank shakes my hand. He's a wiry man, mid-fifties, still fit but a little worn: pencil-line wrinkles below the bushy ears, thinning eyebrows, a hairline hard to find precisely. He's a real estate lawyer in Dallas. As a boy he was a stargazer-his happiest memories, he says. His mantra, since becoming chair of the board, is “State-of-the-art. State-of-the-art. We need to become a state-of the-art institution.”
And
be fiscally strict.

Frank plants his feet in front of the interstellar shots on the walls, just to the left of the handwritten letters. He rubs his chin. “Scratch Pluto,” he says.

“Frank—”

“Kick it out. It's a piker. An imposter.”

“All their lives, people have been taught that Pluto is a planet,” I argue.

“Well, it's not.”

“Not everyone agrees with that conclusion.”

“The boys at the Rose Center say it's a rotten little—”

“Ice ball, I know. But the International Astronomical Union—”

“As you're aware, Adam, the Rose Center is the country's premier planetarium. Absolutely state-of-the-art. From now on, it's the standard by which we measure ourselves.”

“Frank, with all due respect, there's no way we can compete with the Rose, or anywhere else, on the budget of
pretzels
you give me. Since when is
science
the board's business? You're supposed to watch the purse strings. That's all.”

He folds his arms and speaks to me as if to a child. “Adam, we've been mandated, by the Dallman family, to oversee the health of this operation. And in the board's estimation, we need to be perceived as a crack educational facility. If the nation's state-of-the-art planetarium says Pluto's a bit of space trash, a snotty little rag God blew his nose on—”

“More like the ice in his scotch.”

“—then that's the way it's going to be.”

I understand that this is just a minor annoyance for Frank. But I know my audiences. Like children with their bedtime stories, planetarium visitors insist on familiarity and repetition. They need to believe that their universe is steady.

“Frank, correct me if I'm wrong,” I say. “Last week you told me our priority was entertaining folks, even if it meant cutting back on the hard science. Keeping them happy—”

“Right.”

“Believe me, then, what'll keep them happy is the comfort of knowing that their parents and teachers told them the truth.”

“We need to be taken seriously, Adam. Our profits depend on it.” In its oak frame, the Andromeda Galaxy swirls behind his left shoulder. Dear Andromeda, chained to the rock of economic forecasts. “We're going to try one last Sunday ad in the
Morning News
this year, quarter page, trumpeting our cutting-edge
vision—and
our special half-price midweek shows.”

“I see. So, on the one hand, we're supposed to be a circus, and on the other, the National Science Foundation.”

“You got it.”

“You're asking the impossible.”

“And you're just the man to do it!” He pats my arm. He wasn't on the board when I was hired. I'm not the person he would have tapped for the job. Before leaving, Bowers heard rumors, which he happily passed on to me: Frank has confided to his colleagues that he finds me an “odd duck,” a “damn loner.”

“I've got kids in there,” I say. “I shouldn't keep them waiting any longer.”

“Anyway, what's the problem, Adam? Just change your show a little. It's not the end of the world.”

“I'm fond of Pluto.”

“Forget it. It's an outcast.”

“Exactly.”

“Tell me.” He grasps me by the elbow and pulls me close: a stiff, fatherly gesture. A curious mix of intimacy and power. I know what's coming. He likes to be the wise old sage, and often gives me advice in the name of professional solidarity. This forced bonhomie must be a ritual lawyers practice to keep from killing each other. “Wouldn't you be less …
exercised
by these matters if you had a family at home?” Frank says. “Someone to spend time with, take your mind off work? I mean, I love work. I put in twelve, sometimes thirteen hours a day, but when I'm done, I'm
done
, you get me? Shoes off, stiff drink. Wife purring beside me. See what I mean?”

“Thanks for your concern, Frank. It's much appreciated. But I manage.” I think, How does God do it? All alone; bedeviled by petty demons; all those burned-out suns to replace.

“All right. It's just that
your
health is the board's concern too, you know,” Frank tells me. “You're our front man here, Adam. Got to stay strong. In the breach, eh? Anything you need, you come talk to me, hear?”

“I need more money and a clearer direction, Frank.”

He sighs and throws up his hands. In the doorway he stops and turns. “By the way, Adam?”

“Yes?”

“We're not a homeless shelter, okay?”

So. He's seen Zero. He's seen the others. My cheeks burn.

“It's up to you to encourage the
right kinds
of crowds. All right? Think ‘families.' Think ‘wholesome.' Have a good weekend. Get out and have some fun.”

Funny, how running a planetarium-with its self-generated months, years, light-years-compresses my sense of time. After over three decades, my most vivid Saturday remains the one when I was seven, and my mother drove me into Oklahoma City from our home in Holdenville. We were going to see the Beatles in
A Hard Day's Night
, a rare treat. My mother didn't like rock ‘n' roll, but the Beatles, she said, seemed “wholesome.”

Marty had no interest in music. He went to the oil fields with Daddy that day. Daddy had to check on some rig production.

I remember sitting in the plush moviehouse—bright lobby chandeliers, silver spigots on the soft drink machines, crushed velvet curtains by the screen. It was nicer than anything I'd ever seen. It smelled like a new car, leathery and polished. I held my mother's hand. When the Beatles began to sing, every hair on my body (not many back then) leaped to attention. Music and light—from that moment on, their twinned power has stunned me.

I'd never witnessed four young men happier than the Beatles. In the middle of the film, when they broke free of their cramped rehearsal hall and scampered, like puppies, through an open field—when they ran, as Marty and I never could—I thought I'd faint from pleasure. My breath caught in my chest. Mother looked at me, worried. I reached into my pocket and gripped my inhaler, but I managed to settle down and didn't have to use it.

After the show, in the car, I hugged my mother, hard: her belly's soft heat through her pink cotton dress, the fluff of her breasts against my cheek. She took me to an ice cream parlor for a chocolate sundae with candy sprinkles and nuts. Sunlight shattered off my spoon onto her pretty, lipsticked smile.

The parlor was near my grandmother's house, and I asked Mother if we were going to see the old lady. She smiled and said, “No, this is our special trip. Just you and me, okay?” The ice cream tasted sweeter then. Our special trip! I sat up straight in my wrought-iron chair. “Why is Grandmother so unhappy?” I asked.

“She's had a hard life,” my mother said. “Life is hard here on the plains.”

“How?”

“Are you kidding? All this dust and heat. Nothing but oil field work or farming.”

“Do
we
have a hard life?” I asked.

She laughed. “What do you think?”

“I think it's all right.”

“Me too.”

Through the parlor window we watched the sun set. The evening star appeared above a mud-brown line of dark, one-story buildings. “Make a wish,” my mother said.

With Frank gone, I draw the curtain to the Star Room. The velvet has frayed at the bottom. Mental note: New velvet. Bypass the board. The children are laughing and talking, throwing sharp paper triangles across the room. The kids' clothes smell like spoiled milk. Ms. Pickett shakes her head at the pudgy boy I'd seen in the hallway, the one with the unlaced shoes. He's begging to go to the bathroom now. I've dawdled and made the teacher's job harder than it needs to be.