Blue Stars (2 page)

As for love and sex? (Because that was what most people meant, after all.) Well, she had that too, not that it was anyone’s business. For years she had been “dating” Paul West of the UW’s Whitewater campus—a well-regarded Woolf scholar and a good friend to her children. They had meals together, they had sex, they often accompanied each other to weddings and department functions. But marriage … no. Neither of them—as far as Ellen knew—had seriously considered it.

“Invite Mike for dinner,” she finally told Wes. “He sounds great, and I want to meet him.”

“Okay, sure. But Mom?” Wesley, thinking. “It doesn’t have to be, like, a big fancy thing because I don’t know if…” He trailed off and Ellen read his mind:
If it would make Mike feel uncomfortable, the way we are in our big house and everything.
Oh, her sensitive beautiful boy, almost a man.

“No, we’ll just grill burgers or something. Chips and soda.”

The afternoon Mike first came over was utterly unexceptionable, although likely all of them wished they could remember the particulars more. Because soon after, it all began to change—their longtime unit of three altered its shape and became four. And Ellen, as it turned out, was changed most of all.

*   *   *

No one sat at the head of the dining room table. Ellen didn’t like to, didn’t like the feeling of separation from the kids. Occasionally she put Wes or Jane there, though mostly they ate in the kitchen. She had tried with Mike too, but he always refused, picking up his silverware and plate and moving around to the side. It never felt right to any of them. So there they were at Jane’s birthday dinner: two and two, facing each other across candles and serving dishes and the ironed tablecloth. Ellen and Wes on one side; Mike and Jane on the other.

But on that night Ellen thought she might have liked to be at the head, with an outsider’s perspective on this happy sight: three young adults, talking over each other and dishing up the food. After the last-minute rush to get it all out here, she would be content to simply sit for a moment and watch them. Wesley wore the gray shirt she’d given him for Christmas, and a new pair of glasses. A few nights ago he had appeared in the doorway of her study, on his way out to a movie.
If you get a chance,
he’d begun, overly casual. Would she mind taking a look at a file he’d just e-mailed her? Nothing major, just a draft of a paper he would give at a conference this spring, his first. If she had any comments, great, or just … maybe she’d want to see it.
I do,
Ellen cried, delighted.
I’ll print it right now.
Wes had failed to hide his proud smile, saying
no big deal, no big deal
and then hurrying away downstairs.

“Mom?” Jane was tilting the wine bottle her way.

“Just a little. That’s enough, that’s plenty.” Ellen said nothing as Jane refilled her own glass with a generous amount of red wine. It was, of course, Jane’s nineteenth birthday—and Ellen had never needed some arbitrary law dictating when it was appropriate for her children to drink, especially in her home. Still, it was just like Jane to go ahead like this, without checking.

The wine had brought a pretty flush to her daughter’s cheeks. Her wide, open face never hid any trace of what she was feeling, and right now she was describing an internal argument in her animal rights group. Ellen studied her, curvy and passionate and messy, in a raggedy oversize sweater and half-braided hair. She willed herself not to come near any topic related to her younger child’s life-in-flux. In a way, it was a relief, Jane’s semester off college—for now—after the battles over her UW grades and dropped courses and eventual academic probation. Now she was living in a co-op house near campus and working as a receptionist at a veterinarian’s office.

“I got her on my team,” is how Mike put it, when he wanted to wind Ellen up. “Dropouts represent!”

“Dropping out?” she had retorted. “When were you
in
?” And instantly regretted it. Failing to get him to enroll was still painful.

But Mike had only grinned. “Boom! Ellen for the win!”

“So now they’re threatening to back out, you know, like to leak the whole plan to the bloggers. I heard this one douche might even tell some guy he knows who
works
at Petco!”

Ellen tuned in late to Jane’s story. “What plan?”

“Mom. What I just said.”

“I mean, it is pretty harsh,” Wes said. “You guys pretend to be on their side, but then you turn around and smear their whole business. How’s that going to make them want to work with you again?”

“Fuck them,” Jane said. “They buy from this puppy mill, we just know it. We do. So we infiltrate, and expose.”

“Just like Buffy!” Mike said.

“I guess I should have bail money at the ready,” Ellen said. “You and I are going to be on a first-name basis with the cops soon.”

“Well, if you don’t want me to call you, I won’t,” Jane flashed. “You’re the one who teaches
Civil Disobedience
.”

“Of course I want you to call me,” Ellen said. “It’s just that seeing those bruises…”

“She did it to herself,” Wes pointed out. This was last summer, when Jane and six others were arrested for chaining themselves to dog cages outside the Capitol. An
Isthmus
photo from the incident, two officers lifting a cross-legged Jane up from the grass—dog collar around her neck—was pinned to the bulletin board in her room upstairs. Passing through sometimes to open or close the shades, Ellen would stop to look at it. She knew that expression her daughter wore: determined, angry,
you’ll break before I do
. She had known it since Jane was a toddler.

“Anyway, the chili is great, Mom. It’s from one of my cookbooks, right?”

“Now why’d you have to go and remind us,” Mike said, his spoon clattering down to his plate. “Food for freaks.”

“Fly your freak food flag,” Wes said. “Whoa. Try that one ten times fast.”

“Freak flood fag. Fleak food flag. Freak frood—”

“Ignore them,” Ellen said. “I don’t think you miss the meat at all!” She did miss real stock, however; shiitake dashi left a sour aftertaste.

Snow continued to fall heavily; they could hear the groan of snowplows down the block. Classes began tomorrow. Ellen hoped the secretary would have her syllabi copied and ready. With no book project under way, just think how much time would be freed up to actually pay attention to her students. “Save room for cake,” she said. Clink of flatware on plates.

“So, actually…” Mike began, and they all looked up. “Okay, so the thing is—” Maisie’s whine and scuffle. “I’ll get her.”

“It’s fine. She just went a few minutes—”

But Mike had already jumped up, was off to the kitchen.

Ellen looked to Jane, who shrugged. Next to her, Wes broke his corn bread into small and smaller pieces.

“She didn’t have to go after all,” Mike said, with an invisible halo of cold as he sat back down. “Just checking out the snow.”

“What were you saying?”

“About…? Oh. Yeah. So I joined the Marines. Last week.” Mike ate a big mouthful of chili, chewed and swallowed it. “Sounds all weird and heavy, when I say it like that. Like a commercial or something.” He made his voice low and mock-stentorian. “
Joined … the … Marines.
”

Ellen and Jane stared at him; Wes looked at his lap.

“Don’t wig out,” Mike said, nervously. “You’re not going to wig out, are you?”

“This is a joke,” Jane said. “Right?”

Ellen’s thoughts ran thick and slow.
Not the Marines as in,
The Marines
, obviously. Because there’s a war. Two wars. I should take the ice cream out, let it warm a little. Although, did soy ice cream actually need defrosting?

“—Go to Camp Lejeune for infantry, that’s after basic at Parris Island—”

“‘Basic’?” Jane spat. “Did you just say ‘infantry’ and ‘basic,’ like you know all the fucking lingo now? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about it’s a good option for me, with regular pay raises and … the recruiter says that the benefits are ridiculous, you get, like, free health care for the rest of your life, plus they’ll pay for college, and—”

“WE can pay for you to go to college! God, she’s only tried a million times!”

“Jane.”

“And what recruiter? Those guys get
paid
to sucker you into signing your life away. Literally! I mean, how fucking dumb are you, Mike. You think he gives a shit about you? What, did he tell you how
strong
you are, what a big
man
you are, how you’ll rock all those push-ups and—”

“Actually, I think he does give a shit. He came up on the Southwest side too, and now he’s got like a family and owns his own place and … I already rock push-ups.” Mike risked a sweet smile.

“Mom,” Jane begged, her eyes wild. “Say something to him!”

But Ellen couldn’t. She could barely look at Mike. Too much was happening, all at once. And Jane’s outburst, as usual, had pushed aside any room for her own feelings.

“You knew about this,” Ellen said quietly. To Wesley, at her side. “Didn’t you?”

He blew his breath upward, toward his floppy bangs. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, but … it’s his decision.”

“Thanks, man.”

“I don’t believe you,” Jane said. “You were in on this? You let him? Oh, I guess you probably think bombing Iraqi civilians is okay now, and obviously torturing prisoners held illegally at Guantánamo is fine, and—yeah, and Mike’ll get his face blown off on a desert road, that’s cool, just as long as we get the oil, right?”

Ellen stood up and walked out of the room, shaking. In the kitchen she took out four spoons and then held them, for a long moment, unseeing. She opened the freezer but didn’t recognize the soy ice cream at first. When she tried to read the label the words were meaningless. They were probably in there whisper-arguing about who should come in to see if she was okay. Wes, they would send Wes.

And here he was, just as she closed the freezer. “I know it’s crazy … Look, we don’t have to talk about it anymore,” he said, with a worried smile. “Not right now anyway. Jane says she’s not hungry, but at least she’s not, you know, still going on about it. Do you—”

“Start the coffee if you want,” Ellen said, walking quickly past him. “I’m going upstairs. I need to work because I—I forgot to do something earlier, and I think I should—”

“Mom, it’ll be okay.”

“Soy Dream,” she called back, a half-angry sob, from the stairway. “Ask your sister what to do with it!”

Ellen managed to get into her study, and pull the door shut. She moved around aimlessly for a few minutes, once in a while picking up a book or a folder, and putting it back down. Then she found herself in her reading chair, with the lamp off.

She had failed. They all had. Pretending they were a family, pretending everyone was equal. That Mike’s background, full of abuse and truancy, had dissolved for good because of twenty months when she had acted as his official guardian.

Guardian
. The word raced through her like nausea.

He’d said it, without saying it:
Came up on the Southwest side
.
A good option for me.
As if he knew that this home full of books could never be where he belonged. That Wes and Jane, grad student and vegan activist, were on a different path, one that was closed to him no matter how nice this professor lady had been.

Goddamn him. Did he think so little of her, of her love for him?

A memory: driving out at midnight to a bar to get him, after Wesley had woken her.
I think Mike’s in trouble.
And he was—handcuffed and shoved up against a squad car.
Shit,
he said, when he saw her.
Go home. Please.
But she’d stayed, and her anger at him quickly dissipated when she saw how rough the police officer was, how he taunted Mike, how he hit him. Ellen surprised everyone, herself included, when she got up close and demanded he stop and when he didn’t, she held up her cell phone and shouted that it was all on video (not true), that she had his badge number (not exactly). It worked, sort of, in the sense that Mike got put in a car and taken to the station while another weary cop escorted Ellen away and lectured her on obstruction. By dawn, Mike was released into her custody with a summons. On their way home they stopped at a diner and ate breakfast in silence. Mike paid the check.

Surely it wasn’t too late. Whatever he’d signed could be unsigned, torn up. She would talk him out of it. Ellen looked down at her hands, and the four spoons they were clutching. She hadn’t foreseen this but now she would manage things. As usual, the sight of her bookshelves ringing the room brought calm; her thoughts settled into orderly rows as she ran her gaze over them. Built-ins of cherrywood, they were probably the most expensive thing she had ever purchased on her own. She’d had them put in about two years after Don had died, designed to her exact specifications using a contractor Serena recommended. One or two less bookish friends had admired them but asked if the renovation wouldn’t tug down the home’s resale value. How many people, after all, needed shelving of this magnitude? Missing the entire point. Ellen had built herself a home in this room.

Somewhere in all these books, in all these words, she would find a way to get Mike out of going to war.

She should go downstairs. She should be with Jane, at least, for her birthday. Spoons still in hand, Ellen picked up
The House of Mirth
and switched on the lamp.

*   *   *

Ellen woke cold and cramped, curled up in her chair. She wrapped a mohair afghan around herself and went out onto the landing, where she stood for a moment, disoriented. The house was quiet. She wanted to go to bed, but hunger drew her downstairs. In the kitchen, she made toast and tea, and was about to bring it back up when she saw flickering light in the strip of space under the basement door.

Mike, on the couch in front of the TV, looked up guiltily with his fork in about half of Jane’s birthday cake.

“Don’t be mad. I know you are, and I get it, but…”

“Move over.” She set down the tray and poured tea into two mugs. “Just don’t blame me. No butter or eggs, what can you expect?”