Shake Down the Stars (19 page)

“No,” Margot says.

“We are not watching
Star Trek
again,” adds Sophia.

“I wasn't going to ask you to watch
Star Trek
, smarty pants
.
I realized something.”

They exchange dubious glances.

“SF Stargazers meets tonight. Isn't that great?”

“No,” Margot says, continuing to eat.

“We don't want to go.”

“Oh, come on. They meet at the beach and they always have hot chocolate, and they tell great stories. You don't even need to bring a telescope! People just show up! Doesn't that sound like fun?”

“No.”

Margot says, “If I had my phone back, now
that
would be fun.”

“But it's a full moon tonight and with the fancy scopes they have, we'll be able to see every crater and nook.”

“No, thank you.”

“No, thank you. Hailey liked telescopes, not us.”

Margot shoots Sophia a look, and she immediately gazes down at the table. “Sorry.”

I'm not sure how much the girls remember about Hailey; since I stopped talking about her long ago, I know I haven't helped matters. Now I worry that all that's left of her memory is a mystery cousin they hardly remember and a tragedy surrounding their aunt.

Deacon Morris said once that when you hide pain, it only shows up later in one form or another, just more virulent. He says it's best to deal with it straight on and with honesty. I think of this as I look at them.

“It's okay that we talk about her, you know. It's my fault for making you think otherwise.”

“It won't make you sad?” Sophia asks.

“To some degree, I'm sure. But it's important. I don't want you to forget her.”

“She looks cute in her pictures.”

“Yeah, she was. She was really smart, too. Like you two.”

“Do you think you'll have more kids?”

Margot bumps Sophia's elbow and glares.

“It's okay, Margot. I want you both to feel free to ask me anything—about anything. I'm always here for you, okay?”

They nod. I look at Sophia. “I can't imagine having another child.”

“Maybe one day you will,” Margot says.

“You shouldn't, like, be so alone,” Sophia adds. “Sometimes you seem lonely.”

“I'm working on that.” I smile. “Which is another reason it would be
great
to see my old friends at SF Stargazers.”

“Ha-ha,” Sophia says. “
Not
going to happen.”

Margot continues staring at me.

“You want to ask something else, sweetie?” I say.

“Yes.”

“Go ahead. Like I said, you can ask anything you want.”

“Can we, like, have our phones back now? It's been, like,
forever
.”

•   •   •

I
use Mark Warner's homemade telescope to gaze at the moon. He made the telescope himself over a period of three years and even made his own equatorial mount. The girls and I came to the agreement that I could stargaze for one full hour if I returned their phones. They now sit on the beach next to a fire someone has made, roasting marshmallows and talking with another girl their age and her younger brother. We adults go about stargazing. There are roughly ten of us out tonight. I recognized most of them when we arrived, and I was greeted as though I'd been gone for only a couple meetings instead of nearly five years.

SF Stargazers isn't a social group in the usual sense. Even when I attended regularly, we rarely discussed our personal lives and tended to stick with those topics we couldn't talk about with non-stargazers—topics we were hungry to discuss, such as trips to various observatories, certain star findings, or telescope modifications and additions. That's what makes the group so special. We know absolutely nothing about one another, yet we feel grateful for friends who speak the same language.

I'm especially happy to see Mark tonight. A regular Carl Sagan, Mark has always been able to answer any question I've thrown at him. He has every right to be proud of his telescope, a DS 3 with ultra light and lots of power. It's no wonder it took him three years to build. His telescope has such a long range I should probably seek out clusters and constellations, but Mark seems to understand my fascination with the moon tonight and tells me to take as long as I want. Which I do. It's a perfectly clear sky and nice to be able to inhale the smell of the ocean as I stare at the moon's craters and shadows, ridges and crooks and hills. “It's gorgeous,” I murmur.

“She sure is,” I hear Mark say. “Can't beat Earth's satellite for beauty. Her face is bruised from the meteoroids that banged her up after the original big bang, but she looks just fine to me.”

I pause long enough to smile up at him. He holds a cup of cocoa in his hands and wears a fleece jacket and his trusty binoculars around his neck. His silver hair blows in the wind. “Glad you're back,” he says, which for a nerdy stargazer like himself may as well be a confession of complete love and adoration.

“Glad to be back,” I say with a smile.

He looks up through his binoculars. “My biggest dream is to go to the moon and set up my telescope and look at Earth. I want to see how she'd look through my viewfinder.”

“I like that idea.”

I gaze through the telescope again. I'd always thought I'd bring Hailey to one of the meetings with me when she was old enough. I would have loved for her to meet Mark and to have shown her off. She would have liked Mark's idea of going to the moon with a telescope.

I imagine her now, older even—twenty, thirty—her shoes covered in moon dust as she sets up her telescope and stares down at Earth. And hell, since it's my fantasy, I imagine she finds me through her viewfinder, and I find her through mine. We smile at each other and laugh and wave. The thought that she might find me here, some two hundred fifty thousand miles away, makes me feel less lonely, more appreciative even. I know Hailey would want me to enjoy my time here on Earth, to make the most of it. Earth is a lovely little planet, after all, with its perfect mix of air and water, gravity and sky, spinning forever and ever eastward on its axis, tiny as a pebble, suspended in a sea of black.

C
oco, all three hundred–plus pounds of her, takes two steps forward. Her buttocks undulate beneath her cotton top; her calf muscles quicken and relax. What are clunky, ugly shoes for the rest of us may as well be ballet slippers for her, as she extends a dainty, pointed foot before each step. The noise of the bowling alley recedes as one of Tchaikovsky's drippingly romantic violin concertos swells behind her. She then swings her arm back, and we watch the ball catapult down the lane and hit the pins in an explosion of white and black.

Another strike.

Clem and I don't bother applauding. Coco's strikes are now legend and all but expected.

“I think we've been duped,” Clem says.

Coco walks back and takes a slow, meditative pull from her root beer. She was chatty and gregarious before walking through the doors of Albany Lanes, but as soon as she took her personal ball—gold and pink and engraved with her initials—from her personal bag—also gold and pink with
Hot Coco
embroidered at the top—she was all business, leaving Clem and me regretting the ten-dollar bet to the first-place winner.

She checks the monitor now. Her score so far is 130. Clem has forty points; I have thirty-two. Since we three started to bond over punch at the mourners' group, Clem and I have been trying to convince Coco to spend time with us. For weeks, we suggested dinner or lunch or even tea and cookies, but Coco always said no. That was until last week when Clem asked, “Isn't there anything you'd want to do? I know for myself it's no good staying in the house all the time. Piper and I are up for anything. You'll have a lot of fun.” Clem looked at me expectedly and I gave a firm nod. “Yeah, just last night Clem convinced me to watch
The Notebook
for the first time. Let me tell you, nonstop excitement.” I pretended to put my finger down my throat.

Clem gave me a look. “We'd love to see you outside of this here rec room, Coco. Isn't there anything you'd like to do?”

And that was when Coco said slowly, “Let's go bowling.”

Coco sits next to me and wipes her hands with her special towel while Clem stands and readies herself. “Remember to keep your eye on the center line in that floor,” Coco advises.

“I am tryin'!”

Clem brings her ball to the tip of her nose and gives her ass a wiggle. She wears tight white pants and a tight pink shirt. She's wearing makeup now, and her hair, dyed to resemble the dark red of her youth, is pulled back by a floral scarf. Clem, it turns out, is a babe.

Our neighbor has certainly taken a liking to her. George is a potbellied man the next lane over, and he can't help but stare with his bottom lip hanging open every time she takes a turn. His friend, Leonard, apologized for his behavior, explaining that George is recently divorced. But George, who's in his late fifties and roughly the same age as Clem, seems to think that because, like Clem, he's also from South Carolina and lived in a town only ten miles from where she grew up—(“You grew up in Jarvis? You don't say! Do you know a fellow by the name of Randy Truss?” And Clem's cool response, “Can't say that I do”)—he has every right to ogle and flirt.

“You need help with that ball, girl?” he says, watching her.

“I never needed no help with balls,” Clem retorts.

“I bet you don't.” He grins at Leonard who, embarrassed, goes for the fries he's eating.

“Let her alone now,” Coco admonishes. “You know better than to break a bowler's concentration.”

“Hell, she's breaking mine in those tight pants of hers.”

Clem shakes her ass again and trots down the lane. We watch the ball fly straight up in the air and crash-land on the seamless wood floor before it rolls into the gutter.

George says, “Impressive.”

“Oh shut up, you,” Clem snaps.

He laughs, heaves himself up from his chair, and gets his ball. A few steps and—
strike.
He turns and smiles at Clem. “Why don't you let me give you a lesson or two?”

Clem holds her ball near the tip of her nose as she waits to take her second turn. “I doubt there's anything of relevance that
you
can teach
me
.”

“Wanna make a bet?”

“Try to throw with more force,” Coco offers.

Clem straightens her shoulders and back. She takes concentrated steps toward the pins, but as soon as she releases the ball, it shoots backward, flying straight toward me. I hear Coco shout, “Duck!” and cross my arms in front of my face, hoping I come out alive. When I hear a loud thud, I slowly open my eyes and watch Clem's ball rol
l past my foot.

“Sorry 'bout that,” she says with a scowl.

“Pins are in the opposite direction!” George laughs.

“If you'd shut your trap, I'd be able to concentrate!”

“Ever think of joining a league, girl?” he says as Clem retrieves her ball. “You got talent!”

“I sure wish you'd hush up!”

Coco and I exchange looks. “Go on,” she says to me. “Show 'em what you got.”

I manage to knock down eight pins between my two turns. Then Coco's up—all grace and beauty on a bowling alley floor. Even George is mesmerized.

Strike.

Coco and her son, Reginald, were regular bowlers. They'd go as far as Vallejo to join weekend leagues. Coco was proud to tell us she keeps his room exactly as it was; it's still filled with all of his bowling trophies and ribbons. She hasn't bowled since his death and says her game is off, but Clem and I sure as hell can't tell.

After another game, we go to the pizzeria next door. It's spring break, and I've done nothing much except sleep, read, and hang out with Clem. Mostly we watch the bad movies she picks and eat ourselves silly at restaurants we've never tried before. Yesterday we went to a day spa in the Claremont Hotel—her treat. She says I'm too pretty not to keep myself up, and she talked me into a pedicure, manicure, and even getting my eyebrows shaped. And now here I am sitting in a booth with my two perfectly arched brows and two new friends, laughing and eating pizza.
Who would have thought?

Before we left the bowling alley, George repeatedly asked Clem for her number, and now Coco and I tease her.

“You should have given him your number,” says Coco. “When a man has a puppy-dog crush, you know he'll treat you right.”

“
Pishaw!
Did you see that gut? Looked nine months pregnant and ready to deliver any second.”

“Pishaw?” I say. “Did you just say pishaw?”

Coco says, “I'd rather have a man with some meat on his bones than somebody I fear I'll break soon as I get on top of him. Ain't nothin' sexy about going to bed with a man you think you might crush. You know what I'm sayin'? I like a man who can bring it! I like a man who makes me
feeeeel
like a woman.” Clem and I watch, eyebrows raised, as she runs her hands over her body while rolling out her chest and undulating her hips.

“I'll say.” Clem nods.

“You should get back on the horse, Clem,” Coco tells her. “We are all sad women at this here table, but the body has needs, plain and simple. Nobody is saying you have to marry the man, but if he's willing and you're in a dry spell, you gotta make it happen. I'm just sayin'. Coco don't go too long without a little somethin' somethin'. I don't think it's good for a woman's overall attitude.”

Clem says, “And I don't think it's good for a woman to sleep with men with big guts. I don't like 'em skinny; I ain't sayin' that. But you know Frank was active, and I'm used to a man who likes to get outdoors and who's in good shape. Frank and I played tennis and golf. We sailed. There were trips to wineries. Oh we had a good ol' time.”

Coco stares at Clem as if she's just described trips to Neptune with layovers on Mercury. I gather that she can't fathom living the kind of life Clem shared with Frank, who made a huge profit off stocks and flew his own plane. Coco and I live a mere ten minutes from Clem, but I doubt Coco has ever been to Elmwood, and to Coco, Clem's life is probably more like what she sees on TV. But that's the point Deacon Morris always makes: If we allow it, loss can bring us together, break down our walls, and make us more caring—if we have the courage to let it happen.

“You should see this one here's ex-husband, Coco,” says Clem, motioning to me. “He showed up one night at the meeting I used to go to, as handsome as hell. I wasn't surprised at all when this young thing snatched him right up.”

“A young thing, huh?” Coco says, ready for a story.

I help myself to another slice of pizza and tell her the entire Spence-once-loved-Piper-then-dumped-her-for-a-nitwit story, start to finish. I end circling back to the beginning of our conversation. “I guess you could say Spencer is my type. Smart. Tall. That's what I like.”

“Well, he can't be too smart, dumping you the way he did,” Clem says.

“Thanks.”

“I always hoped that Reginald would be
honest
with whoever he ended up with. I hate men who lie to you. Why they think we can't tell they lyin', I'll never understand. I brought him up in the church and on the Bible and taught him from day one, respect women and show respect to whoever you're dating.”

“I told my Tommy not to bring any mousy women home,” Coco says. “I have no time for women who don't have a spine.”

“Were you ever married, Coco?” I ask.

“Twice. By the time I found out I was pregnant with Reginald, I was finished with men.” She shakes her head. “They some strange, you know what I'm sayin'?”

Clem and I nod.

“But when Reginald was born, you know how you do, I fell in love with him.”

“I wanted a boy,” Clem says. “I love how they dote on their mommas. My Tommy always doted on me. And I loved being the lady of the house looking after my boys.”

We all fall silent as if her comment has induced us to go back to those days when we were mothers and caregivers. The moment doesn't last very long, though, because in walks George just then, belly and all. I nudge Clem with my elbow and gesture toward the entrance. When they make eye contact, George doesn't have sense enough to leave her alone and struts right up to our table.

Clem glowers. “You stalkin' me?”

“Naw, I ain't stalkin' you. This is America, and I have an inalienable right to eat. Free country, last I heard.”

Clem glances at his belly, currently hovering above our table, round as Jupiter. “Looks to me like you're taking good advantage of your inalienable right to eat. What happened to your friend?
Annoy
him to death?”

“You sure don't hold nothin' back.” He glances at Coco and me while chucking his thumb. “She always so sharp-tongued?”

“Yes,”
we say together.

“Leonard's gone on to his family. I'm here by myself.” His demeanor changes as he runs a hand over his hair. When Clem doesn't say anything, he tips an imaginary hat. “I don't mean to bother you ladies. You all have a good day now.”

He starts toward a table in the back. I glance over at Coco, and we fix our eyes on Clem.

She gives her head a firm shake. “No.”

Coco says, “It's just pizza. He means no harm.”

“Look at him, Clem,” I add. “He's all alone.”

She looks over. George sits in a wide booth all by his lonesome self while he studies the menu. He wears long tube socks and corduroy shorts, and he has tucked his napkin in the top of his shirt. Clem shivers dramatically.

“What does Deacon Morris say?” I ask.

“Gotta pass on kindness; otherwise it doesn't get passed around,” Coco replies.

“Oh, you two,” Clem gripes. “You all want the company of a fool, so who am I to stop you?” She tosses her napkin on the table and struts over to George. From the back, in her tight pants and top, tennis shoes, and bouncing ponytail, she looks like a young woman from the 1950s.

Coco and I grin as we watch the silent film they put on: George's face lighting up when he sees her; Clem thrusting her hand toward our table and practically scowling as she invites him over; George clapping his hands and rising from his table before she can say,
Come join us.

To make room, I move next to Coco. George squishes in next to Clem, who scoots as far away from him as she can. “Happy?” she says in a huff.

Coco and I smile. “Welcome, George,” I say brightly. “Pizza?”