Rats Saw God (28 page)

Houston was, as I had left it, sweltering and breezeless. I sat in the immense backseat of the Lincoln with my sister. The astronaut, like me, wore a tuxedo. Jacqueline, in a canary chiffon dress, turned to converse with Sarah and me.

“Are you looking forward to your senior year?” she said to my sister. Sarah began a long account of her intentions for the upcoming school year: increasing the number of parking spaces for students, leading the academic bowl team to state, perfecting a countertop cold fusion generator that runs on coffee grounds and Styrofoam packing peanuts. I drifted off when she began. I tried to steel myself for the upcoming horror show. I knew the routine. I would be introduced by the astronaut to countless members of the military and local social glitterati, “Son, you remember Colonel Edmunds, don't you?” Of course, my only encounter with the colonel in question had come when I was in diapers. But I will bear this. I will shake hands and dispense “of courses” like each one didn't chip off a little piece of my soul. I will smile for the photographer from the
Houston Chronicle
society page. I will answer in polite clichés any questions asked of me. Then, with my filial duties complete, I will escape behind some tapestry, a bottle of Dom Perignon in hand, satisfied that I, too, can be a complete fake. I wondered if any former presidents would be at the ceremony.

When the astronaut and I went to pick up the tuxedos earlier in the day, the woman behind the counter handed us each other's rentals. It wasn't until we were standing beside each other in front of the full-length mirror that we noticed
the error. He couldn't button his collar and his slacks dragged the ground. In the mirror I noticed I was perhaps a half inch taller than the astronaut.

“My, what handsome men!” our saleslady said.

Looking out the back window I was surprised to see we were leaving Clear Lake and heading into downtown Houston. We pulled into a metered space, and the astronaut asked Jacqueline for quarters. I followed the couple up the steps of the Old Harris County Courthouse building, feeling awfully self-conscious about wearing a tuxedo. I looked at Sarah for a sign, but she just shrugged her shoulders. We passed lines of people paying for traffic tickets, applying for liquor licenses, registering vehicles. We climbed a wide flight of marble stairs with an antique, hand-carved polished banister that indicated this building had once been used for something more important than minor court procedures. The astronaut stopped outside a door on which L. C
ERVANTES,
J
USTICE OF THE
P
EACE
was painted in 1890s gold rush–style lettering.

“We got everybody?” he asked. He didn't need a spoken answer. The four of us were pretty easy to check off. I noticed he was holding Jacqueline's hand. PDA from the astronaut? The apocalypse couldn't be far behind.

Inside, I was introduced to Ben and Dottie Darby, Jacqueline's parents, and Lupe Cervantes, our gregarious and blatantly female justice of the peace. That was it. There were seven of us in the crowded office. I wondered if we would soon leave for a larger hall.

“Let's get started,” Ms. Cervantes said, ending my speculation.

The justice of the peace leaned back against her desk.
Jacqueline and the astronaut stood in front of her. Dottie flanked her daughter. Sarah and Ben sat in padded chairs—high dollar by city government standards—against the back wall. I stood just behind and to the side of the astronaut. The “service” took all of seven minutes, including my fumbling and subsequent dropping of the ring. I had to get on my hands and knees and fetch it from under Cervantes's desk. Ben belly-laughed and Sarah joined him. I could feel myself turn red. When I finally found the ring, I stood and offered it to the astronaut. I looked him directly in the eye, expecting to see agitation. Instead, he nodded to me reassuringly. I put the ring on his palm.

Ultimately it sunk in: This was
it
—the entire ceremony. There would be no VIPs, no society columnists, no long greeting lines. Why, then, did he care whether I showed, let alone agreed to be his best man? I watched the astronaut as he repeated the vows. His voice was so strong. I had seen weddings where the groom trembled and squeaked each pledge. Not the astronaut. He made it very clear he intended to marry this woman, to love, honor, and obey. He would, too—of this I was certain. The astronaut didn't make promises lightly. I thought of his divorce from Mom. I had wanted to put it out of my head since the night Sarah had tried to enlighten me about the causes. I had spent four comfortable years blaming the astronaut; but, thinking about it, the astronaut would have never gotten a divorce of his own volition. Divorce is failure, and the astronaut simply couldn't stomach failure.

No, something forced his hand. Mom wasn't happy; that was for sure. She knew she was second to his career. She knew she
didn't have an equal partnership. I had been right about these things. The astronaut wasn't especially sensitive, tender, romantic. Had that led her to another man? Sarah sure thought so. I didn't like imagining it. If it were true, it would explain a lot of things: why the astronaut didn't fight the divorce, why he didn't show up for my graduation, why he was never around when Mom came to pick up Sarah, why we had moved.

Of course, that had to be it. I thought about having to get away from Houston after everything that happened with Dub and Sky. I couldn't stand to drive the same streets, to walk the same halls, to talk to shared friends, to be around anyone who possibly knew what had happened. I had to leave, and so had the astronaut.

He had known all along who I blamed for their split, for our move, for the separation of Sarah and me. He knew who I would have chosen—and eventually did choose—to live with once I had the option. And he had said nothing. He let me keep thinking of my mother as the heroine and himself the tyrant. That must have killed him, but he said nothing. Now he was putting his life back together. I wasn't here for show. I
was
his best man.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Cervantes said. The newlyweds kissed lightly and we clapped.

Cervantes circled around to a dorm-room-sized refrigerator behind her desk and withdrew a bottle of cheap champagne. From a filing cabinet she pulled out seven glasses of assorted sizes and shapes. She popped the cork while everyone hugged Jacqueline and shook the astronaut's hand. Jacqueline escaped her father's embrace and approached me. I looked down and adjusted my cummerbund.

“Hey, handsome,” Jacqueline said, “a kiss for the bride?”

“Uh, sure,” I answered, hopelessly embarrassed. She offered me her cheek. I tried to pucker, but I'm afraid all she got was the faint pressing of dry lips on the side of her face.

“Thank you,” she said, sounding sincere. Then she hugged me. Sarah hugged her next, enthusiastically. How could the two of us be so different? Didn't we have the same basic genetic coding and similar upbringings? Cervantes walked around the room, handing us glasses from a plastic serving tray. The next thing I knew, everyone was looking at me expectantly.

“You're supposed to make the toast, nimrod,” Sarah stagewhispered.

“Oh,” I said. They should have issued me some sort of best man handbook; I wasn't prepared for this. I recalled the first day I'd met Jacqueline. “To Alan and Jacqueline,” I said, raising my Texas sesquicentennial souvenir glass. “May he always forget strategic defense meetings, and may she always be worth it.”

Everyone clinked glasses. I touched the astronaut's last, but before he drank, he saluted me with his glass. I returned the gesture and the two of us sipped our drinks.

Afterward, Dottie took out one of those Fun Shot disposable cameras and had Cervantes take a group picture of the complete wedding party.

I rode shotgun in the Lincoln as we left the courthouse. Jacqueline sat between the astronaut and me. Sarah rode in the backseat with our new stepgrandparents. Before we pulled away from the curb, the astronaut turned in his seat and addressed everyone.

“How does barbecue sound?”

I knew just what he had in mind—the Calvary Baptist
Church in Huntsville, a good forty-five minutes north of Houston. He had offered to take me when I lived in Houston, but I had always refused. I had known, after all, that it was his favorite. This time I joined fully in my brisket-lovin' family's enthusiasm.

The cinder block Calvary Baptist Church and Barbecue serves meals “family style.” The restaurant occupies an offshoot—probably a garage in a former manifestation—of the congregation hall, and six days a week the men of the church barbecue ribs, brisket, and sausage over hickory pits outside the building while the women prepare the coleslaw, potato salad, sweet tea, and bread that serve as the only sides. Every dish came to our indoor picnic table on heaping unmatched platters. We ate with disposable forks and knives that came sealed in plastic along with our salt, pepper, and napkin. We were the only white people—a crucified Jesus adorning the church events calendar excepted—in the joint. I thought momentarily of the teenaged astronaut as the sole non-Hispanic grape picker in Yakima County.

“They're building a brand-new church across the street to replace this one. They say it's going to be a half-million-dollar affair with stained glass and a pipe organ. Business is that good here,” the astronaut said, looking impressed and imbibing more grease in a bite than I had seen him consume in three years' of breakfasts. The man had a vice.

“It seems funny,” Sarah said, barbecue sauce dripping down her chin, “that the wedding wasn't in a church, but that the reception is.”

“Well, Jacqueline said she wanted a church wedding. This
was our compromise.” Then I heard the most unfamiliar sound. The astronaut laughed, not one of his suffocated chuckles, but an honest from-the-gut laugh.

•   •   •

That evening I called Doug. He invited me over, and we sat by his pool in the 95-degree Texas night and talked. He told me about his plans to open up an all-ages music club on the drag in Austin. I told him about this weird dream I'd been having where I was competing for the University of Washington fencing team.

The next morning, I woke to the sound of car doors slamming. I pulled back the shades and went cold. Sarah was getting out of Dub's Civic. Apparently, she had spent the night with her. Dub was already out of the car. Her hair was the original brown color I had seen only in elementary school pictures. It was so long, it nearly reached her waist. Her clothing was standard issue—nothing remained from our former wardrobe of rebellion. She hugged my sister. I watched her huge mouth as it manipulated good-byes. Everything about her was so familiar, but I saw a stranger. All my vital signs stopped in anticipation of the fallout. I quit breathing. My heart paused. My knees prepared to give way.

And then… nothing.

The last thing I wanted to do was to run outside and scream at her or take her in my arms or slit my wrists and bleed all over her car. If I felt anything, it was stupid and ashamed. I crawled back under my covers and listened as the Civic door slammed shut and Dub drove away for good.

I contemplated the one item hanging in my room. On the
far wall, the photograph Sarah had taken after my freshman year, the one of the lost swan landing on Clear Lake, still hung. I realized then why she chose this particular shot for me. I thought of its twin hanging in the astronaut's study, the one of the panicked salamander, wide-eyed and frightened having just lost half of itself. I knew then, too, why Sarah had framed that one for him.

•   •   •

I left York Manor the next morning. All I was taking to college were a beaten suitcase stuffed with T-shirts and jeans and the computer I hadn't wanted as an eighth grader.

“I'm leaving,” I yelled into the house. I swung my keys around my index finger and walked the short sidewalk to the El Camino.

“Hold on there a minute, Steve. I've got something for you,” the astronaut shouted as he jogged from the house, Sarah on his heels. He held an unwrapped box in his outstretched hand. I stopped before getting in my car, and he slid the package across my hood. “One last graduation present.”

I severed the Scotch tape with my thumbnail and opened the box. I pulled out a huge sweatshirt.

“Steve, let me see the front,” Sarah ordered.

Holding it by the shoulders, I turned the sweatshirt around so she could see the design. Sarah gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

“Thanks,” I said. “I'm gonna need something warm.”

“You'll like Washington. Seattle's a first-rate city. First rate.” The astronaut pulled out his wallet and withdrew a business card. “Now, call collect any time you need anything. I've also put
the phone numbers of your aunts and uncles on the back. They'll be happy to help you with whatever you need.”

Thanks,” I said again.

“You've checked your spare tire?”