The Half Life of Stars (3 page)

‘How beautiful it is out here. The sea a deep, religious blue. The light as sharp as lemons.’

‘Miles and miles of sunburnt flesh, and breasts the size of melons.’

‘Claire, leave your brother alone. He’s just trying to express himself.’

That’s a good one, I thought. I’d never heard it called that before. He’d been pretending to write his stupid poem all afternoon, but he’d barely managed to complete the opening stanza. That’s because he’d spent all his time ogling the Rodriguez twins in their string bikinis, and repositioning his note-pad to cover up the bulge in his nylon shorts.

‘OK,’ I said, turning over on my Lilo. ‘You freaks can call it what you like. But just so as you know, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of artistry in masturbating twelve times a day and pretending to be a Russian cosmonaut.’

‘I’m not pretending to be a Russian cosmonaut.’

‘What are you pretending to be, then? Why do you wear a goldfish bowl on your head and make everyone call you Vasily?’

My mother gave that short snot-less sniff she did when she was irritated and readjusted the straps on her swimsuit.

‘It’s fine if your brother wants to experiment with his body,’ she said. ‘It’s natural. It’s normal. There’s nothing dirty abou—’

I sank to the bottom of the pool. The sunlight dimmed and their faces faded out and I bathed in the calm and the silence. What it was to have enlightened, liberal parents.

The horror, the horror.

1986. North Miami Beach. A stroll along the boardwalk with old Mr Kazman.

‘You left your family back at the pool again, huh?’

‘Yeah, I left them there. They drive me mad.’

‘Don’t say that about your family. Family is the best thing a person can have.’

Change the subject. Don’t get into it. Distract the old boy with the birds.

‘They look a bit pre-historic, don’t you think so? Don’t you think they look a little weird?’

‘The pelicans? Sure. Fine at catching fish, though. Look at that one go, quite the fisherman.’

We stared for a while and focused on the dive, but the pelican shuddered and came up empty.

‘No luck, it looks like.’

‘No, he missed again. Bad luck.’

‘You want a peanut?’

‘OK, why not?’

Peanuts. Mr Kazman, always had peanuts. Someone had told him it would stop him getting colon cancer if he ate a bag a day, and colon cancer was Sol Kazman’s biggest worry.

‘You got to eat fruit. And peanuts. You got to make sure that you keep yourself regular.’

‘I’m only thirteen. I don’t think I need to worry about that yet.’

‘You can never start too early. My Esther, she never ate peanuts. That’s how it got her.’

‘The big C?’

‘Yep. Yep. The big C.’

This was a typical conversation at Siesta Pines, the apartment complex where we lived. Crushed between a car lot and a fast-food outlet that stank of old coffee grounds and grease. A building, so worn out and weary it looked like it was gasping in the heat. And parked on every bench, shuffling along each walkway were an army of narcoleptic retirees: sunburnt and cranky, held up by wooden canes, like rows of runner bean plants in the sun. Christ knows how we ended up living there;
apart from the Rodriguezes there wasn’t another young family for miles around. I suppose that’s what happens when you pack up your life one spring morning, and flee your suburban home with indecent haste.

My father received his job offer on a Friday afternoon and the following weekend we were gone. The entire Ronson clan: me, Mum, Dad and Daniel and my oblivious little sister, Sylvie. It was so unexpected, so out of the blue, we didn’t even have time to get excited. Dad had been offered work abroad from time to time over the years but Mum had always made him turn it down. On this occasion it was her that got the ball rolling. Mum that booked the plane tickets, Mum that rented out the house, Mum that packed all our clothes into tight cardboard boxes and made us wave goodbye to each one of the rooms before we left. She packed that entire place up in five days flat, to this day I’ve still no notion how she did it. And then she pulled off the greatest trick of all, the greatest act of faith I’ve ever seen. When she saw where we were going to live–the place we’d call home for the best part of a year–she stood up straight, lifted her chin and swallowed her disappointment whole.

‘We’re going to do fine here, I can feel it,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this place.’

Daniel and I stood there open mouthed and I’m pretty sure I reached out for his hand. It looked nothing like it did on the TV. It looked nothing like it did on
Miami Vice
.

‘Who do you like better, Crockett or Tubbs?’

‘Neither.’

‘Come on. You have to choose one.’

Nothing. Silence. Not even a groan or a stifled sigh.

‘Mum, is Daniel autistic?’

‘Don’t be stupid, of course he’s not.’

‘Can you catch autism, or are you born with it?’

‘Your mother just told you, now, eat your soup.’

‘Because if he
is
autistic, I think he should complain. He’s been short changed. You’re meant to have some special skill to
compensate, like adding up really fast or being able to paint all squiggly like Van Gogh.’

Still nothing; just more huffing from my father.

‘I wonder if running fast counts. Hey, there you
go
. That’s proof. Daniel is low level autistic and sprinting is his compensatory skill.’

‘Fuck off, Claire. I
am
not.’

Hallelujah, a reaction; the slamming down of a mash-potato-covered fork.

‘Why don’t you talk, then?’

‘Because…I’ve got nothing to
say
.’

‘You had stuff to say when we lived in England.’

‘So what? Now I don’t, all right?’

And that was that. Discussion over.

‘Mum?’

‘What?’

‘Why did we move to Florida?’

‘You know why, for your father’s work.’

‘Is he making a lot of money?’

‘No.’

‘Is he working less hours?’

‘No. He’s not.’

‘Can I have some of your gin and tonic?’

‘Don’t be an idiot. No you can’t.’

‘Well can I go out running with Daniel, then? There’s nothing to do here, I’m bored.’

‘You’re not going out tonight,’ said my father, piping up. ‘You’ve both got homework to do.’

‘She can come with me if she likes, what’s it to you?’

‘Are you going to let him speak to me like that? Are you going to let him talk that way to his father?’

‘Leave Mum alone, can’t you? It’s not
her
fault.’

Daniel had had enough. He pushed back his chair and stormed out of the room, away from the dinner table towards his cave. To his telescope and his space manuals and his pile of worn out running shoes; to his sanctuary of weirdness and stink.

‘See what you’ve done now?’

‘What did I do? I just said he should get on with his homework. He’s wasting his life. He’ll be a nothing, that kid. What does he think, he can make a living from
running
?

‘He might do. Mum, tell him. Daniel’s the best in the county. One day he might win the Olympic games.’

My father’s eyes flickered in my direction, resting briefly on the bridge of my nose.

‘Jesus,’ he said, glancing away again. ‘If I’d had the chances he’s had, the education he’s had…’

My mother laughed without pleasure.

‘You wasted your chances, David,’ she said. ‘You ruined them. Every single one.’

My mother stood up from the table and the front door clicked shut behind the porch. No one heard it but me. Because I was tuned into Daniel’s habits by then. I knew that he needed to escape from them–to break away from them–that he was going outside to take his run.

‘You got any more questions, clever clogs?’ said my father, tartly. ‘Anything else you want to say to upset your mother?’

We stared at one another across the table. Grilling each other, sizing each other up. As alien as a pelican and a fish.

‘No,’ I said, clearing my plate away. ‘I don’t have any more questions.’

That was the way it went that year. Nobody filled in the gaps. Arguments reared up like stepping stones in a flow of silence that sometimes held out for months. It was like waiting for a rainy season that never came. The tension would build with the humidity until all of our clothes were sopping wet. You could hear the drip drip drip on the floor tiles as we ate, pools of tension would form at our feet. They grew so deep I imagined they had banks, that fish swam back and forth between their tides. I’d beg, yell, pray for the sky to crack and when it finally did, what intensity. The violence of that lightning, the thunderous roar, and rain that cut into your skin like pins. Words in whole sentences, emotions on sleeves, tears and accusations and spit.

And just when you thought you’d made some sense of it, drawn some lesson from it, the clouds would roll over and snuff it out. Dad shrinking and distant and full of self-loathing; Mum frozen, eccentric and adrift. He began working longer hours, she began smoking more pot, and she started to dress oddly too–going without a bra, wearing too much make-up, gardening in those short, short shorts.

When Sol Kazman had his stoke they all said it was on account of those endless bags of fatty peanuts that he ate, but I knew better than that. I knew it was down to my mother’s wacky fashion sense, to her hot pants and her unfettered breasts. When she went outside to water the ficus tree each morning after breakfast there were always a crowd of old men waiting: cloudy eyes out on stalks, wooden canes tight in their hands, lined up neatly along the bench.

Frustrated and grouchy I left my father at the dinner table and started on a postcard to my friends. What a time I was having, how great it was out here; the sun, the sea, the fabulous views. But the weather was humid and the sea was often rough and the views from our apartment at the rear of the building were of alleyways and
Honest Murray’s Autos
. I gave up. I threw away the card and went looking for little Sylvie, playing in the den with her building bricks. Three years old, as bright as a copper penny, the family tonic to all of us. And because I’m an optimist or a fool, or a little of both, I convinced myself things would get better. Mum and Dad would settle in here eventually, and Daniel’s mood swings would calm down soon enough. Any time now we’d be friends again, mates again, two fine compadres against the world. I had to think things could improve over time, that life could fix itself and heal over. Instead of this, the world chose to rupture.

‘Hey kid, don’t cry. It’s a bad day for all of us. A real bad day for America.’

I didn’t care about America, I just wanted to go home.

‘Come on now, you’re not alone. The whole country’s grieving today.’

For my dad?

‘For those astronauts, poor souls. What a thing to have happened.’

I wasn’t alone with my tears that afternoon, the whole of the hospital was in shock. I lost count of the number of people who said they knew how I felt, who sat down beside me and offered me a shoulder or a dampened tissue. They cried for something bold and intangible. I cried for something that was real. A person I knew. A person I cared about. Not a hero, not even someone good. Someone wasteful, imperfect and begrudging: someone complicated and difficult to love.

I’d been strolling on the sand when it happened, collecting seashells and seaweed and boys. Sylvie and Mum were watching the shuttle launch back at the apartment and I’d snuck out without saying where I was going. I was sulking because I hadn’t been allowed to go up to Cape Canaveral with Dad and Daniel and because I’d been told off for making a fuss. Sylvie wasn’t making a fuss. Sylvie didn’t mind staying home with Mummy and making cakes. Sylvie didn’t mind if Mummy smoked a little pot. It didn’t make any kind of sense. I wasn’t a space nut like Daniel, but they knew I would have loved to have gone along. When the launch got delayed and they drove all the way home,
I felt sure they would take me with them on that second day. But they didn’t. So I was pissed off. So I was AWOL with the pelicans beside the sea.

It was a beautiful morning: frigid, cold and icy with a freshness that seemed to spring clean the entire beach. The wind blew sand through the palm trees polishing their fronds and making them shine, and the sea coughed straight from its belly spitting globs of black seaweed onto the beach. I did star jumps on the sand to keep myself warm and skimmed handfuls of shells into the choppy waves. And then I spotted someone that I recognised, a person who wasn’t sick or cross or old. Julio Rodriguez, my next-door neighbour; the boy in my school that I loved the most; the boy whose name I drew on my notebooks in felt-tip pen, whose face was engraved on my eyelids. There we were, just the two of us. Out in the cold, away from prying eyes, puberty’s merry cocktail of hormones fizzing unchecked through our veins.

I greeted Julio coolly. He asked how I was, and I tried hard not to seem smitten.

‘I’m fine,’ I said, in Spanish. ‘How are you?’

‘My family are crazy, my twin sisters do my head in.’

‘I know how you feel,’ I said. ‘Sometimes it’s good to get out on your own.’

He smiled at me. He understood. That was the instant I fell in love.

‘Your Spanish is getting better.’

‘Really, is it?’

‘Yeah, it is. You learn fast.’

What a delightful thing this was. Simply by concentrating, by paying attention, by bending and furrowing your tongue a certain way, it seemed you could understand the entire world.

I suggested we went to get pizza, but Julio turned up his nose. This was the kind of boy who liked to do things; he wasn’t the kind of boy to sit around. In no time at all he was pulling off his shirt and insisting we went for a swim. Our skinny bodies shivering like whippets, we ran across the beach towards the sea.
Julio told me that we had to dive deep under the waves, that once we were past our shoulders it would be warm. It was true. The sea temperature hadn’t had time to drop yet, and the contrast to the bite of the cold winter air made it feel like we’d jumped into a bathtub.

The pair of us swam about like seals that afternoon, jumping in and out of the seaweed until we were exhausted and out of breath. At some point our naked legs rubbed up against one another and a look of acknowledgement passed between us. Julio swam up beside me and without asking if he could, began to tug away at my thin underwear. We began to kiss, awkwardly, roughly, and I felt his fingers rub up inside my pants. It felt nice. He moved slowly and calmly, not frantically like a boy–at least he did to begin with. And some minutes later, I don’t recall how many, I realised that he must be entering me. I felt the ache, the stretch, the thin shot of pain, but I needed tangible proof. Something to take away, a souvenir of some kind, something to mark the occasion. Suddenly, there it was: a tiny puff of blood, reddening the foam at the top of the waves and spreading out through the warm salty water.

Daniel had blood spots on his bandages. He lay completely still on that hospital bed, his eyes fixed unsteadily on the ceiling. His mouth was bolted shut. No matter what we said, no matter how tight we clung to him, his lips refused to ease apart. I couldn’t stand the way he looked: so fragile and scared and wired and fucked up, his feet all broken and swollen.

The facts of the matter were brutal. Even after they’d managed to reach my father’s car, the traffic hadn’t moved again for another hour. They couldn’t carry his body away through the stranded vehicles, so he’d had to stay exactly where he was: slumped in the front seat with his arms folded over his exploded chest, a blanket pulled up over his face. Daniel had sat on that embankment the whole time: utterly alone, knowing what he knew, giving up on words, giving up on language, giving up on childish explanations.

We tried for a good long time to get him to talk but eventually he closed his eyes and went to sleep. It was amazing how he managed to do this; with us hugging him and harassing him and telling him that we loved him and promising him that he’d done his very best. Somehow he managed to shut us out. For the whole of that day and for four days after that, he managed to shut out the entire world.

They took Mum to identify my father’s body while Sylvie and I waited outside in the corridor. The stink of disinfectant made me want to throw up but Sylvie didn’t seem to mind it all that much. I wondered if she knew what was going on, if she could sense the heartbreak that was all around her. I didn’t know what to say when my mother came out. She hadn’t spoken to me the whole way up in the police car, she’d just sat there and stared out of the window, plaiting and replaiting Sylvie’s hair.

‘Where have you been?’

That was the last thing she said to me. When I turned up from the beach with my clothes in a knot and the last of Julio’s semen spilling out into my sea-soaked underwear. I looked almost as frightened as Daniel. I’d seen the police car parked outside the apartment block and though I knew it wasn’t true, I half suspected that they’d come to arrest me. Mum was crying. A policewoman had her arms round her shoulders and a policemen tried to take hold of my hand.

‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ I said, backing away. ‘It wasn’t my fault, it was Julio’s.’

‘It’s not important now,’ said the officer, bending down. ‘Claire, something very bad has happened.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I heard it on the radio. I already know about that.’

‘No, sweetheart. It’s about your dad. He had a heart attack.’

‘Is he…OK?’

‘No. I’m sorry. He’s not.’

I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel anything at all. Tears ran down my cheeks and stung my wind-chapped lips, but I couldn’t begin to take it in. And Mum just stared at me. In one searing
glance she saw right through me, determined just exactly where I’d been and what I’d done.

‘What about my brother? What’s happened to Daniel?’

‘He’s gonna be fine. He’s a hero as a matter of fact.’

This was a strange turn of events. My father stone cold dead and Daniel at the same time a hero. There was something in the police officer’s voice that suggested there was something to be happy about in all this. I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything at all. I thought about Julio’s mouth pressing hard onto mine, and about our bodies wrapped up tight in the salty waves. I thought about the tiny rush of pain as he’d entered my body for the very first time and tried to remember exactly how it had felt. I thought about it all the way up to Cocoa Beach. All the way along the coast, past the cities and the swamps, to the hospital where they’d taken my father and brother.

She walked out of that morgue like she was made of cardboard. The tears had rubbed her make-up to distant corners of her face and a crust of salt and orange coloured lipstick had settled heavily into the lines around her mouth. It looked to me like her face was rusting, like my mother had begun to corrode. I wanted to go up and hug her–I desperately wanted her to hug me–but Sylvie got to her first. She marched straight towards her, put her arms around Mum’s legs and sweetly, dutifully, began to cry.

‘Hush Sylvie,’ she said, gathering her up in her arms. ‘Don’t cry now, it’ll all be all right. You were there when Mummy needed you, you’re a wonderful girl. You were always there for your Mummy.’