It Takes a Worried Man

First Star

One day I didn’t see her any more. But for almost a year, the year I was in fourth grade, she came into our neighborhood every evening pedaling a white Schwinn bike. She wore a tomato-red sweater, always, and a stiff petticoat beneath a checkered brown dress that nearly reached her scuffed and bulky Buster Brown shoes. From a distance, her head looked bigger than normal, too big to fit beneath her short black hair. Up close, I noticed black fuzz, like the start of a sloppy pencil sketch, marking her upper lip.

A girl with a mustache? my son Jesse asks me now, nearly twenty years later. Jesse’s nine. His brother, Seth, a year younger, listens closely but doesn’t say anything.

That’s right. A girl with a mustache.

You were too little to have hair on your face, Jesse says.

Yes. I was nine, maybe, or ten? It took me weeks to realize a woman always followed the girl back then, on a white bike of her own, also wearing a sweater and dark clothes. At first I don’t think I even saw this woman; I was too busy each day in my family’s driveway taking advantage of the evening’s last light, pogoing, skateboarding, or wishing on the first star in the sunset’s dusty red streaks. When I did see the woman, I didn’t connect her at first to the girl … until one night, bored with my games, paying more attention than usual to my neighborhood (the Jenkinses’ poodle, next door, barking for its supper; the eldest Clark kid yelling down the street, “Ready or not, here I come,” prompting crazy screams from deep inside the bushes), I thought how odd it was that this woman appeared each night a few paces behind the girl on a similar bike. I figured, then, they were mother and daughter.

Duh, Dad, Jesse says.

Yeah, duh. But see, I hadn’t watched them closely till then, or thought much about them. I hadn’t taken an interest.

How big was her head?

Pretty big.

I’d have been inster-sted right away, then.

Well, I was, sort of. But only half-caring, you know, the way it is when you’re doing something fun and don’t want to stop.

What was her name?

The girl’s? Suzanne, but I didn’t learn that for a while.

Suzanne. It’s pretty, Seth says in a tiny, frightened voice. He’s been frightened since his mother and I first broke the news, which is why, I suppose, I’m telling the boys this story. I don’t know if it’ll help them. Or me. Jesse’s frightened too, I think, but he covers better than his brother, or he’s jazzed as well by genuine curiosity.

The woman looked mad, I say. Never failed. Night after night after night, her scary arrival: wormy old scowl on her face. Wrinkled brow. Like the bicycle seat was giving her a real pain in the rear.

Jesse laughs. Seth smiles, tentatively.

One night the girl stopped near our driveway. Just up and stopped. I hadn’t said anything to her or made a gesture of any kind. I think I was bouncing a basketball that night and my mother had called me in to do my homework. Maybe I was standing there, cooling off, getting ready to go inside. Maybe that’s why she stopped.

Like she thought you were waiting for her or something?

Maybe so. I don’t know. But she squeezed her handlebar brakes — those little wing-like things? — and settled like a sparrow at the edge of our drive. I said Hi. She smiled. I saw the fuzz then.

Was it creepy, her smile? Jesse asks. I’ll bet it was creepy.

No, not really, it was, it was sort of —

Pretty? Seth chirps. Hopeful, quiet.

Yes, Seth. Sort of pretty. Like staring at something underwater, where everything’s a little off, you know, but still beautiful.

My fish tank!

There you go.

I don’t get it, Jesse says.

It doesn’t matter, Jess. Her smile wasn’t creepy. That’s all I’m saying. Right away, her mother pulled up behind her, spokes flashing, turned a scowl on me, and said, Let’s go, honey. The girl stiffened to get her balance on the pedals and they headed down the block.

A few nights later she stopped again. Her mother hadn’t come around the corner yet. I remember, this time, exactly what I was doing. I was wishing on the evening star:

My father had gone into the hospital that morning with chest pains and I wished he’d be okay.

Like Mom’ll go to the ‘spital soon? Seth asks. Like that?

Yes.

Can we go outside later and wish on the star?

It’s not a star. It’s a planet, Jesse says. It’s the planet Venus.

Seth glares at his brother, confused.

You know, Seth, your mother’s not sick, don’t you? I say. Women have babies all the time. She’s going to be fine.

Still, I want to make a wish.

We will. Of course we will.

For Mama. And for our haby sister.

Will she have a mustache? Jesse asks.

I don’t think so.

But her head’ll be big, right? You said.

I don’t know, Jess. The doctors think … yes, her features will probably look a little funny to us at first.

Now that the real subject has breached our talk, the boys, I see, are getting restless. Do you want to hear the rest about Suzanne? I ask. They squirm.

They’ve seen the haunted people in our town (we’ve used the word haunted in front of them instead of damaged, retarded, or disabled, to soften the impact), and long before Janet got pregnant again, they’ve had questions. Why does Mr. Charters talk to himself and walk bent, like a chimp? Why does Mrs. Wellston wear an overcoat in the summer? Janet and I agreed: too young to understand. So we passed along the community legends, the pretty things we all tell ourselves to keep from saying what there really is to tell. Mr. Charters, the grown son of the Baptist church’s regular Sunday organist — the most devout woman in town — wrestled with an angel one morning outside the Buy-Rite and twisted his spine. Mrs. Wellston grew up in the Klondike and never lost the chill (actually, I hear she’s from moneyed Houston, up the road, whose social life looks awfully chilly to me, from recent visits we’ve made to the big-city doctors — all that scrambling after oil shares, property, prestige).

But Down’s syndrome, we decided, can’t be gussied up in any way. Or maybe Janet and I just don’t have the starch anymore to be evasive with the boys, not on something this important, which of course affects them too. Nor did I know how devout Janet herself could be until we discussed, and she rejected, rejecting the baby. I’m wrestling an angel, I thought, alternately warmed and chilled, unsure of my own feelings, watching her lovely face those tense late-nights.

Last winter, when Dr. Evans told her she was expecting again, we’d both just turned forty-three. We’d gotten careless, believing we were too old to have an accident.

Anyway, Suzanne, I say. The boys twist in their chairs. Just as I did with you guys, my daddy had taught me to make a wish when I first saw the star —

It’s not —

— the planet, whatever. Birth and death, he used to say, and in between it’s only wishes. Naturally, I was worried about him that night, the night he spent in the hospital. I’d seen him early in the morning, before he left for his law office, clutching his shirt and vest, looking muddled and tired, jabbering under his breath, pale as a hard-boiled egg. He was young — my age now (genetics and age, Dr. Evans has been educating us lately; nothing happens by accident). My mother was staying with him, so I had a babysitter. I was standing in the driveway, wishing, just before going inside to get my pj’s on and finish my homework. I heard a rattle behind me and a little rubber screech, turned and saw the girl. She had stopped at the driveway’s end again, and stood there gripping her handlebars, shivering a bit in her sweater. The evening was cool. Goosebumps splashed my arms. What’s your name? I asked her. Her hair looked lopsided, tossed around by the wind as she rode. Stepping closer, I smelled something like yeast, or oven-fresh bread. I don’t know if the odor came from her skin or her clothes, or where it came from. I’m Tom, I said. She smiled, then nodded up at the … at Venus, where she’d seen me staring a few seconds before. I wish I may, I wish I might, I said to her.

Wish? she said.

Yes, I said.

Suzanne! her mother called, rounding the corner a few yards away — that’s how I learned her name — and the girl, startled, fumbled for the pedals with her feet. As she passed, the mother scowled at me like an old dog that doesn’t want to be messed with any more.

Did you like your babysitter? Seth asks. Was she good as Cathy? I bet she wasn’t good as Cathy. Cathy’s a high school girl whose family lives across the alley from us, and who is Seth’s favorite sitter. He may be seeing a lot of her soon, we’ve told him — the only thing that pleases him in this whole dizzying deal.

She was okay. But the important thing is, I got my wish. Temporarily, I think. My dad came home the next night. He had some pills to take, but otherwise he said he was fine. He promised he’d never again go away. Together we wished on the star, and he said how the sun is always out, on the other side of the world, even when we can’t see it. It’s always got its headlights on, he said.

Suzanne didn’t stop for several weeks after that. Her mother rode closer to her for a while, and I’d see them as I clomped around the driveway on my stilts, or shot baskets. I pretended not to glance Suzanne’s way, less shy of her than afraid of her mom.

Did you like Suzanne? Jesse asks.

I was curious about her, the way you’re curious about Mr. Charters and Mrs. Wellston, the way you’ll puzzle over your sister.

They’re different.

They are, and it’s okay to wonder about that, even to be a little afraid of it. We can’t help feeling scared. But you know what? One night, a couple of months after she’d stopped to look at the sky with me, Suzanne pulled her bike up in the driveway. Her mother had fallen behind, I guess. I didn’t see her. I was standing next to my father’s golf clubs, thinking about taking a practice swing with his driver. He’d been polishing them earlier in the evening — he and his law partners always had a big weekend round, as I do now — and he’d left them in the drive to take a phone call inside. So, as I say, I was standing there when Suzanne stopped, shoestrings flopping all over the concrete —

Head so humongous she couldn’t hold it up! Jesse laughs.

Not true, not true. Are you listening? Are you getting the point of my story? What is the point of my story? I think. She stared at my father’s bag and I said, Golf clubs.

Goff? she said.

Golf.

The mother, prompts Jesse. Right?

Right. You knew she couldn’t be too far behind, eh?

Scowling.

Scowling, exactly. The scary arrival. But this time she spoke to me. Sweating a little, from trying to catch her kid. Swaying on her bike. She said, Suzanne is a special child and she’s not ready for playmates. Do you understand? I didn’t understand.

Especially boys. We need to get our exercise in the evening, but you have to understand, she can’t stop and play. Okay?

Okay, I said.

It’s sad, Seth says.

I did feel sad, and I didn’t know why, really.

Because you were starting to make friends, Seth insists, hopeful again.

Maybe. Maybe we were. I didn’t see her after that. She quit coming around.

Her mother made her stay home, Jesse says triumphantly.

Wherever I was hoping to lead the boys, Seth has come closest to getting there, I think. I feel tired. The same age as my father. Is that why I’m muddled, nostalgic, trying to make a point? Maybe it’s best to stick with legends. The truth seems harder to fix, somehow.

Yes, her mother had snatched her out of reach, I say.

Can we go outside now and make a wish?

Sure, Seth.

Jesse leads us out to the drive, from where we see Venus just topping our roof’s jagged peak. The driveway is spotted from an oil leak in Janet’s Jetta. I check my watch. She’ll be home from the clinic in twenty minutes or so, but it’s too late now to run the car to Jiffy Lube. Tomorrow.

I remember her face, earlier, as she was leaving, tight, pale, worried, and realize now part of the point of my story. Suzanne’s mother’s scowl.

Yes ma’am. Yes ma’am. A special child. I understand now.

Seth jams his hands in his pockets and whispers:

I can guess his wish; Jesse’s too. But as we stand here watching the evening light disappear, as I remember my father’s driveway, years ago, and Suzanne — her haunting smile, her sorry, too-big shoes, her hushed Goff? — I want to tell the boys that scary as differences are sometimes, they’re not always what we have to fear most.

My daddy’s heart stopped in a sand trap two months after he assured me the sun’s light never wavers. His pitching wedge fell to the ground, and according to one of his friends, he stood stunned for just a moment, as though he’d holed-in-one, then he crumpled joint-by-joint, an accordion.

Now, Jesse’s pointing wildly at the sky. There’s Mars and Jupiter and Antares, the scorpion’s heart, see how red it is? Only the brightest ones come out before the sun’s gone —

I’d tell him, if he weren’t too young to understand: Pay attention. Here. Your neighborhood. Yours — for now. Look around. We were starting to make friends.

— later, Sirius, the dog star, will show up over there, and the Seven Sisters —

Sis? Seth shouts, following his brother’s pointing finger. Where?

A car turns a nearby corner; headlights brush the boys’ legs.

Okay guys, you still have homework to do, I say.

No!

Yes. I promise them strawberry ice cream and fifteen minutes of TV if they’ll get their pj’s on and finish their chores before eight.

Geez, Dad, give us a break.

Daddy, I wished that Mama will be okay.

Me too, Seth.

And our baby sister.

Birth and death, and in between … Maybe we’ll call her Goff, I say. It’s a pretty word. What do you think?

Da-ad, Jesse groans.

Together we march back inside, in the dusty sunset’s crimson glow.