The Night of the Comet (28 page)

“Sure. Look at the facts of the situation. Did you or did you not get drunk and make out with her on the floor of her bedroom? I ask you: did you or did you not? That beats tennis any day. It’s a clear and obvious sign. She wants you. She needs you. She’s saying, ‘Please, rescue me from this asshole Mark Mingis.’ That’s what she’s saying.”

I knew Peter wasn’t the best person to take advice from; still, I was glad to hear him confirm what I already believed in my heart was true: that it didn’t really matter what Gabriella or I said. We could say whatever
we wanted; all that mattered was our kiss. Our kiss—that golden, glorious kiss—told the real story. There was no doubt in that kiss, none at all. It was our pledge, and the proof finally that what I felt, she felt, too.

“I’m going to ask her out.”

“You’d better. That’s what you’re supposed to do. She’s probably waiting for you. She’s probably wondering what the hell’s taking you so long.” He shook his head and grinned at me across the table. “You goddamn playboy. There is hope in the world yet. You and Gabriella. Man. Go get her, you dog.”

But try as I might, I couldn’t get near her. Mark trailed her everywhere she went now. He hovered at her side before and after classes; he escorted her down the hallway and then stood by while she changed books at her locker. All Gabriella and I could manage were quick exchanges in passing—innocent-sounding pleasantries about the party, the weather, our holiday plans. But even during those brief encounters, I felt our connection. We were like two spies who shared a great and thrilling secret. I marveled at her ability to move her lips, those lips I had kissed, and laugh and touch her hair, that hair I had stroked, and carry on as if we were just two ordinary people, talking and breathing and doing the things ordinary people did. But I was sure that anybody who looked at us would’ve seen what impostors we were. Even Mark could see it; that was why he was keeping her from me. There was no hiding it; our love shone all around us like a spotlight.

In Earth and Space Science, my father turned off the lights for a slide show on cloud formations. He was excited about the bad weather; it coincided fortuitously with our unit on atmospheric precipitation, he said. As he clicked through the color photographs, I watched Gabriella from my desk at the back of the room, attempting to read her thoughts in the tilt of her head, the slope of her shoulders, the movement of her fingers in her hair. She turned to gaze out the windows at the rain, beautifully.

“Cumulus,” my father said as a slide flashed onto the screen. “Look familiar? That’s what’s responsible for our rain today. Warm air rises up to meet a cooler layer of air in the atmosphere, where it condenses to form these thick, cotton-shaped clouds.…”

This, I supposed—watching Gabriella in a darkened classroom, with the rain streaming on the windows and my feet growing cold in wet socks—this was what it meant to be in love. It was a wet, miserable, blissful feeling. I wondered if everyone who had ever loved had felt the same.

A new slide. “Stratus. Got those today, too. Low, flat, hazy formations. It’s basically high-altitude fog. When we say ‘a cloudy day,’ this is usually what we’re talking about.…”

I saw again my mother touching her hair as she walked shakily across the floor of Frank Martello’s library. Was this what she felt, too? This same wet, miserable, blissful feeling? I’d never thought it was possible for adults, parents like mine and Gabriella’s, to fall in and out of love like teenagers, at least not in any world that I knew. But what if they could? Then what?

“Cirrus. What does that look like to you? What do you see there? … That’s right. Comes from the Latin word for ‘curly hair.’ Mares’ tails, they’re sometimes called.…”

At the front of the classroom my father lectured on, crossing back and forth in front of the images on the screen, as though he were walking in clouds.

THE
comet was halfway between the orbits of Venus and Mercury, less than two weeks from perihelion. Scientists all around the world were tracking it, collecting data that had never before been obtained from a comet. Infrared photography showed that its temperature had increased dramatically as it approached the Sun, from -94 °F to 900 °F. Electrographic cameras revealed an immense, healthy hydrogen halo, and observatory photographs recorded a well-defined double tail (both type I plasma and type II dust tails), extending 20 million miles behind it in a graceful arc. In one recently published article that was attracting some attention, “Comet Kohoutek and Penetrating Rays,” a Russian physicist hypothesized that this was the first known visible specimen of an antimatter comet—a comet composed entirely of antimatter that, were it to come in contact with matter, would instantly annihilate both objects with an explosion more powerful than the most powerful of hydrogen bombs. It was suggested that more gamma-ray observations be made to test this hypothesis.

Meantime, noting that the comet was coming from Leo and entering Aquarius, astrologers were forecasting cataclysmic events across the globe for the new year—international unrest, unusual weather, famine, blight, epidemics. In Egypt, bands of hippies had gathered at the Pyramids to welcome the comet, hailing Kohoutek as the Starseed that would bring an advanced new civilization of peace and love to the world. In Nevada there was a rash of UFO sightings, and in New York a cult called the Children of God gathered on the steps of the United Nations wearing red sackcloth to warn Americans to flee from the cities, the Doomsday Comet was coming.

We saw them on the evening news the Friday night before the start of our Christmas holiday. Long-haired, skinny-armed, and staring, they waved signs for the cameras:
THE GREAT DAY OF HIS WRATH HAS COME (REV 6:17)! BABYLON THE GREAT IS FALLEN. THOU SHALT KNOW VENGEANCE!

“Crazies,” my father said, looking up from his work at the dining room table. “The Doomsday Comet. What idiocy.”

He shook his head and went back to his writing. He’d gotten approval from the mayor for a town-wide viewing event. He’d already announced the date in the newspaper: January 6, the first Sunday in the new year. The Moon would be in a good phase then and the comet in optimal position for viewing. He was busy now with all the practical work of organizing the event: enlisting the cooperation of the various municipal departments, getting the word out to civic groups, and so forth. Never mind that we still couldn’t see it without the telescope; my father assured me that the closer it got to the Sun, the brighter it’d become, until by the end of the year it’d be shining like a giant star, the brightest light in the sky.

I headed upstairs to my room, repeating to myself, “The Dooms-day Comet. The Dooms-day Comet.” I liked the ominous sound of it. I knew, because my father had said so, that there was no danger from this comet. I knew, too, that the astrological predictions and supernatural expectations surrounding the coming of Kohoutek were all nonsense—just crazy people saying crazy things, as my father put it. But all the same, I couldn’t help but feel that this comet was something
more than just a comet. Changes were in the air. A jittery restlessness hummed through the streets of our town. Even the wind had a peculiar moan to it tonight. It whistled through the cracks around my window; it blew across the yards behind our row of houses, rustling leaves along the ground and rattling the loose side of the garage shed. Dogs barked, as though they, too, sensed a disturbance in the atmosphere—the penetrating rays of antimatter, perhaps, trickling down from the comet.

In her room next to mine, Megan was singing along to her stereo. Our mother had gone out for last-minute Christmas shopping with Barbara in Thibodaux, and Megan was waiting for her to come home so she could take the car to go see Greg’s band rehearse. Since the party, Megan had been talking to Greg nightly on the phone. She’d begun singing in her room again, too, for the first time in years. She was harmonizing now to an old song about love and promises. Her voice floated up and down above the melody, pleasant and light, sounding an odd contrast to the wind and noise outside.

I turned off my light, stepped up to the window, and uncapped the Celestron. My heart jogged in my chest as Gabriella came into view in the lens. I was surprised to find her at home tonight; I was sure she would’ve been out with Mark or her friends, but there she was, crossing back and forth behind the French doors. I did a quick survey of her room. Clothes were scattered on her bed and furniture; two suitcases lay open on the floor. I knew the Martellos were leaving that weekend to go to Colorado; she must’ve been packing for their trip.

I focused in tight with the Celestron until I was hovering right at her side. I followed her to her walk-in closet and waited while she disappeared inside. She came out with a blouse, changed her mind, and ducked back into the closet. She reappeared with another blouse and carried it to her bed, almost bumping into me as she passed. It was like being back in her room with her as I’d been on the night of the party, except that now she couldn’t see me. I was invisible to her, a ghost. And yet, I saw her so clearly, I felt so close to her that it seemed impossible for her not to know I was there. I wondered if in some special way she could sense my presence. Holding the focus tight to her shoulder, I
whispered in her ear, “Hello, Gabby. Hello. I’m here. Can you hear me?”

She turned and went back to the closet. I decided that if she came to the balcony doors and looked out, that would be a sign that she was thinking of me; that would be my signal to go visit her tonight. I would throw on my coat, hop on my bike, and in five minutes I’d be standing beside her in her room, not as a ghost but for real. Enough of my damn timidity. What was I waiting for? Peter was right: we had made out on the floor of her bedroom, we were practically lovers already. We could at least share a goodbye kiss before she left for the holiday.

“Follow your heart,” as my mother said, “and the rest will follow.”

Just then our phone rang downstairs. My father went to pick it up. I heard his muffled voice coming through the floor as he talked with whoever was on the line. He sounded confused.

Prompted by I didn’t know what, I swung the telescope down to check the patio room of the Martellos’ house. The lights were on, the TV was playing. And there was Barbara Martello standing by their couch, talking on their phone. I watched her speak, and I heard my father answer in our living room below me. This was odd; Barbara was supposed to have been out shopping with my mother. But I figured that my mother must’ve been on her way home now, and so I thought little more of it.

I tilted back upstairs to Gabriella. She was still moving around in her bedroom, laying out her clothes. In my mind’s eye I was already pulling my bike from our garage shed and heading down the driveway. I saw myself standing up on the pedals as I raced out of our neighborhood … and then I was halfway over the Franklin Street bridge, with the red light of the water tower blinking over my shoulder, the stars blinking above … and then I was turning in past the Beau Rivage sign and speeding down her street to her house.…

Junior! This is a surprise
, her mother would say, opening the door.
Of course, come in. Gabby’s right upstairs. Can I get you something? A Coke?

From the corner of my eye, I caught the flash of headlights as a car turned down their driveway and into the garage. I swung the scope
down in time to see Mr. Martello walking into the patio room downstairs. Barbara met him and then followed him as he went out of the room and returned with a bottle of beer. They stopped near the patio doors. Barbara pointed once toward our house. Frank spread his hands, explaining something. She crossed her arms, unconvinced by whatever he was saying.

I left them there and looked again upstairs, where I found Gabriella standing now directly behind her balcony doors. She leaned in and put her face against the glass, cupping her hands around her eyes. Then she pulled her head back, shaped her hands into a telescope, and made as if to search in the direction of our house.

My lights were off so it was impossible for her to see into my room. And yet she acted as if she knew I was watching her. She became playful. She hid behind the yellow curtain on one side of the door and poked her head out. Then she wrapped the curtain around her like a dress and began doing a kind of striptease. She snaked her arm out from the edge of the curtain, rolled her shoulder around, and then snapped the curtain up to her chin, hiding herself. She put a leg out and slowly slid the curtain up to reveal her foot, and then her calf, and then her knee, before dropping the curtain again over her leg. She laughed. I laughed, too. She was fully dressed, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, so her show was more silly than serious, but all the same, I found it wildly exciting.

While watching her, I heard, as though from far away, my mother return home. The car door slammed outside, and then the front door opened and closed behind her. In a weird mirroring of what I’d just seen at the Martellos’ house, I heard my father following my mother around downstairs. They came to a stop directly below my room, talking in tense, hushed voices. I could only make out a few of the words, but the tone was clear enough. They were arguing.

Thibodaux? … Barbara? … Not an interrogation, a simple question … Frank … You admit it now … Because I knew what you’d say … I’m supposed to believe that? … Yes! Yes! What’s so hard to believe about that?

I blocked out their voices and kept my eye on Gabriella. She had
moved out from behind the curtain and was standing behind the balcony doors again. She wagged a finger in the air, as though scolding me. Then she looked down slyly and gripped the bottom of her T-shirt in her hands. She slowly raised it, sliding it from side to side, and then she flashed her chest at me and yanked her T-shirt back down.

I almost knocked over the telescope in my excitement to leave. That was more than just an invitation; it was like an offer. I grabbed a sweater and shoes. Sitting on my bed to tie the laces, I heard my parents’ voices growing louder downstairs. Next door in her room, Megan had turned off her stereo and stopped singing.