Beyond the Farthest Star (10 page)

A
DAM AND MAURENE,
sitting on the sofa, listened politely to an eighties’ soft-rock song on a portable CD player. Their unexpected visitor, Calvin Clayman, dressed like an ad in an American Express travel magazine, beamed at them across the cluttered coffee table. Adam unwrapped a gift from Calvin. Adam’s smile was strained as he held up a tacky religious necktie sporting the print of a planetary-size white dove perched on a dwarf-size earth.

“Thanks, Calvin.” Adam could not think when he would ever wear it or even who he could re-gift it to. “I … I’m sorry, Calvin, but what brings you to Leonard again?”

Calvin stared coldly at Adam, then, smiling wildly, said, “What’s with this ‘Calvin’ business, Ad-man? Call me Callie, like when we hung out in high school, dude.” He dug around under the chair’s seat cushion and pulled out Maurene’s romance novel.

Adam asked, “We did?”

“Heck, yeah.” Calvin held the novel out to Adam, who refused it. “And, well, I’m here because you were missed, bro.” Calvin passed it to Maurene. “Both of you. Radically. At your high school reunion last month? Everybody totally missed you guys, and as president of the Fighting Wolverines’ student body …
aroo!
And since I had business in Dallas, I thought I’d stop by and catch up. So I could e-mail some answers to your classmates’ many inquiries.” He paused and looked from face to face. “You did get my e-mail this morning, right? It was all in my e-mail.”

Maurene replied, “Didn’t check e-mail today. Unless, did you, Adam?”

Adam knew Maurene had checked e-mail. Why was she lying?

Calvin changed the subject, picking up a copy of the
Dallas Morning News.
“Is this all about you, Ad-man?”

Adam, uncomfortable, did not reply as Calvin read aloud, “ ‘ ”By his bold act of sixties-style civil disobedience, Senator Cutter has clearly demonstrated his commitment to resolving the church/state boundary debate,” said Holden Bittner of the ACLU, “even if it means taking his fight from the jail cell in Leonard, Texas, to the United States Supreme Court.” ’ ”

“This is a busy time for us,” Adam began.

Calvin looked up sharply from the newspaper. “Dang, dude. You just might save the world after all. And obviously I couldn’t have picked a more …”

“Inconvenient time. I’m afraid so, Calvin.”

“Call me Callie. Reney …” he interrupted.

Adam resented Calvin’s use of a nickname for Maurene.
Why doesn’t this guy get the hint?

Adam stood abruptly. “My wife is right, Callie. It has been an eventful day and now really is …”

Calvin stood. “Inconvenient, I understand. Though I would’ve liked to’ve made it to the family photos. Not an official visit with old school buds till someone breaks out the Kodak moments from the Grand Canyon, en route to Wally World.”

Maurene gestured to the moving boxes. “Wouldn’t know where to begin to find our photo albums.”

Calvin searched her face. “But they exist. That’s what matters. Right, Ad-man?”

Adam’s smile was strained. “Family’s important.”

Calvin followed Adam and Maurene to the front door and out onto the porch. “I mean, I’ve got a Porsche out there in the street.
A villa in Barbados. And a drawer full of silk boxers. Totally maximizing my life experience. But I am ever grounded by the fact that the photo cube on my desk at work is still filled with stock photos of the models that came in the cube.”

“Thank you, Calvin, for stopping by.”

Calvin peered across the street. “Is that a Maytag
and
a giant Santa Claus in your neighbor’s yard, dude?”

Adam turned to see that, yes indeed, a washing machine now stood alongside the giant illuminated Santa. “Well, yes …”

Maurene shook Calvin’s hand. “Calvin. Say hello to all our friends.” She opened the door and stepped in. “Don’t be long, Adam.”

Calvin’s smile faded as Maurene closed the door behind her. He lingered too long on the porch.

Adam asked, “We played on the basketball team together? That’s how you know my wife and me?”

Contempt for Adam flashed in Calvin’s eyes. “Actually, only one of us played. But hey, you’re about to save the world. Even got you a save-the-world-tie now.”

Calvin turned on his heel and hurried to his Porsche. Adam remained on the step, watching as Calvin Clayman sped away.

Maurene watched through a slit in the curtain as Calvin’s Porsche rounded the corner. Adam, face grim, stared thoughtfully at the front door but did not come in.

What was he thinking?
Maurene wondered. This old high school acquaintance showing up on their doorstep out of the blue … wanting to see their family photo album.

Turning from the window, Maurene gasped as Anne stepped from the shadows.

“Anne?”

The girl’s dark eyes fixed on her mother. “Who is he?”

“I … I thought you were still out, Anne.”

Anne demanded, “The guy who was just here. Who is he?”

“No one, sweetie. Some boy I knew in high school.”

Anne gazed coldly at Maurene, then headed for her room.

“Anne?”

Maurene followed Anne, then grasped her arms, one at a time. Pushing up her sleeves, she caressed Anne’s forearms, inspecting the blotches and scars of self-inflicted wounds that were still healing.

“What?” Anne pulled away.

“Your poem, Anne. I just hope you know how much having you means to me.”

“What about Adam?”

“Your father loves you very—”

“Did Adam know that man in high school?”

“They played varsity basketball together.”

Anne started as the kitchen door opened and closed. Adam called, “Maurene?”

Anne’s expression closed down. “‘Night, Mom.” She went into her room and closed the door.

Maurene returned to the living room as Adam sank onto the sofa. “I’d forgotten how much that bugged me in high school. You cheering. Me sitting on the bench ‘cause I spent my summers on mission trips in Mexico instead of basketball camp fixing a wayward jump shot.”

Maurene joined him. Reaching far back into memories of grade school. “Do you remember Miss Moore’s Tom Thumb wedding, Adam?” She smiled and turned to him. “We were … second grade. How Miss Moore picked you and me to be husband and wife. And how while everybody else was giggling and gagging, you and I were so serious. Just like grown-ups. Even when the other boys teased you, Adam, you never stopped acting the part.”

She spoke in a quiet voice as other memories flooded in. “That was the year my father left my mother, and I remember thinking … I mean, it didn’t matter to me that you were this ‘Miracle Preacher Boy.’ Just that if my own father would’ve acted a little more like this boy in my class …”

She squeezed his hand. “And that’s when I knew I wanted to be married to you.”

“In second grade?”

She smiled gently and continued with the revelation. “Couldn’t multiply or divide, but there I was in Mom’s garden after school, up to my nose in her ‘teacups of sunshine,’ informing her that we played a game in school and I already knew the boy I was gonna marry.”

Her smile faded. “But I was wrong, Adam—and selfish—to think just ‘cause it didn’t matter to me that you were this ‘Miracle Preacher Boy’ didn’t mean it didn’t matter.”

Adam tossed the religious tie onto the table. “We’ll need to talk with Anne, Maurene. She’ll have to be told the truth.”

Maurene nodded and put her hand to her head. “Oh, Adam.”

He pursed his lips, then said thoughtfully, “It would have to have been dropped … his e-mail. The e-mail Calvin insists he sent. I know you were online this morning, and there wouldn’t be any reason for you to …”

Maurene could not look at him. “Yes. It would have to have been dropped. Don’t be up late.”

She felt Adam’s suspicious gaze hot upon her back as she retreated to the bedroom.

Anne sat on her bed in the dark, absently flicking her lighter over and over. She heard her mother approach and stopped as the shadow of Maurene’s feet appeared and then lingered in the light under the door.

She had heard every word they said. It had drifted down the hallway and lodged in her throat. So, what was the truth they would have to tell her?

Anne didn’t know why she had said what she said to Stephen about the stars. She had never really thought about the stars and definitely not what was beyond the farthest one. But the minute she said it, the truth was that she thought about it all the time. And that she didn’t know which was worse: not knowing what was beyond the farthest star or having this sinking feeling inside that never went away, ever, that once she
had
known … but had forgotten.

Maurene’s shadow moved away from the door. Anne flicked the lighter one more time. Holding the trigger down, she inched the flame toward her exposed forearm. Hand shaking, she was on the verge of burning herself when the sound of Adam using a dial-up modem to log onto the Internet jolted her out of her compulsion to self-injury. She gasped and released the flame.

After sitting stunned for a moment, she switched on the lamp. Focusing on a stack of moving boxes, she knelt before a long rectangular box at the bottom of one of the stacks. She pulled it out. A telescope box. Her telescope. Her birthday present from years before. It was labeled YOUR TICKET TO THE FARTHEST STAR.

The colorful design was time faded and corner crushed, but the memory of her with Adam and Maurene in the backyard was clear. He had given her the telescope. They had peered through the lens in wonder and had seen double stars and clusters, and the star nursery in Orion’s Belt.

Anne had gone in that night and drawn a picture and labeled it MY FAMILY. And when she gave it to Adam, he had helped her draw the stars above their heads.

Tonight Anne’s tears fell on the worn box. How had the telescope
survived so many moves? The stars still shone, but somehow Anne and Adam and Maurene had stopped looking up.

So much forgotten. So much left behind. Like how Adam once knew what it was like to be America’s next Billy Graham. And Maurene once knew what it was like to give the valedictorian speech at her high school graduation.

And Anne? She thought she once had been very certain, a very long time ago, What and Who was beyond the farthest star.

Anne stood beside her window, parting the curtains and gazing up at the myriad of stars.

What troubled her most was how they were all putting this pressure on Anne to solve the mystery of her life … when their own lives were just as terrifyingly unsolvable.

It was a short drive to the sheriff’s office. Calvin didn’t even have time to shift the Porsche into third gear. He climbed out of the car and walked straight to the dispatcher’s desk.

The woman whose name-tag read JOYCE took one look and evidently sized up Calvin as another fancy ACLU lawyer come to call on Senator Cutter.

Calvin smiled inwardly. She was only half right.

“Of course the senator’s still here,” Joyce announced. “He wouldn’t go home if we handed him the keys and told him to go. Seems you fellas could encourage him to make bail and get out of here.”

Calvin presented his card. “Calvin Clayman. He’s expecting me.”

“Not a lawyer.”

“Other business.” He waved a tan legal-sized folder.