The Same Stuff as Stars (21 page)

***

The nurse wouldn't let Miss Liza and her nephew see Ray. They weren't kin. Only kin could go into Intensive Care. Angel hadn't been in a hospital since she was born. They hadn't let her go to see Bernie when he was born. She had been too little. The smell was sharp and hurt her eyes, and when the nurse took her in to where Ray was, it was like some scene in a science-fiction horror movie. She had never properly seen the star man's face. It had always been dark without much moon, but there he lay, perfectly still against his pillows with wires and tubes stuck all over him. The only sound in the room was a weird whooshing. Someone had cut his hair and trimmed his beard close. His face lay grayish against the white linen, his lips were sunk and ridged. His eyes were closed. There was no way she would have taken him for the magical star man. This was Ray Morgan, or what was left of him. He looked shriveled, older than Grandma.

“You got a visitor, Mr. Morgan.” The nurse's voice made Angel jump.

The face on the pillow turned toward her, and the eyes opened. “Angel,” he said.

“Hi.” She didn't know what to call him. She'd never called him anything out loud.

“Mama didn't come, I take it.”

“She wasn't feeling too good.”

He half smiled. “It's okay. You came.” He closed his eyes again as though he was too tired to hold up his lids for any length of time.

She didn't know what to say next. She just stood there, wondering what you were supposed to say to a person lying in a hospital looking like he was about to die.

“I been missing you,” she said finally.

“I been missing you, too,” he said, opening his eyes again. “Listen. If I don't come through the operation tomorrow, I want you to have the telescope. Don't let anybody say different, okay? I don't want Mama selling it off.”

“What do you mean? It's yours. You'll be needing it.”

“No. Probably not.”

She went cold all over. “You can't die,” she said.

“I guess I can, Angel.”

“I don't want you to die.”

“I appreciate that. I'm not crazy to die myself, but I have a feeling I'm due.”

“No.” She said it stubbornly, angrily. He had no business dying.

“It's just my old worn-out body, Angel. I never treated it right, and now it's payback time.”

“You're not as old as Grandma, and she's not about to die.”

“Don't be mad at me, Angel. If I'd known you were coming back, I'd have taken better care of myself. It's too late now, but I'm grateful I lived long enough to point you at the stars.”

“I don't know near enough! You gotta come back and teach me.”

“You remember what I said last summer?”

“About what?”

“About us coming from the stars? About our bodies being made of the same stuff as the stars?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, try to think about me going back to the stars where I belong, okay? Whenever you look at the stars, think about old Ray turned back to stardust.”

“What about Grandma?”

“What about her?”

“She's going to feel terrible if you go die on her before she's had a chance to make it right with you. I know she is.”

“Tell her she was a good mama to me. Tell her”—he paused and licked his cracked lips—“you tell her I love her. She'll believe you.”

“I want you to tell her yourself.”

“I will if I can, Angel. I might not have...

He never finished the sentence. The nurse came in and told Angel her time was up, the patient had to rest. “I'll be back,” she said. “You better be here when I do, you hear me?”

It was the last thing she ever said to him.

***

Miss Liza sent Eric to take them to the funeral. Angel was afraid Grandma would refuse to go, but she put on a black dress rusty with age and a patched overcoat and got into the car.

In front of the church was a long black hearse. Two men with slicked-down hair, wearing identical black doublebreasted raincoats, were standing beside it. When Eric's car pulled up behind the hearse, the two men came over. One of them opened the door for Grandma to get out.

“I'm sorry for your loss, Mrs. Morgan.”

Grandma didn't take the hand he offered, didn't even look at him. As he closed the door of Eric's old Buick, he said, “Mr. Morgan didn't arrange for a family limousine; otherwise, of course...”

The second man cleared his throat. “The casket is already at the gravesite,” he said. “If you'll come this way.” He took Grandma under the elbow. She shook him off.

Angel could see Miss Liza shuffling out the door of the library. “Wait, Grandma,” she said. “Miss Liza's coming.”

Eric ran over and took his great-aunt's hand. Angel, the undertakers, even Grandma stared at the librarian, her hand in her young nephew's, her head sidewise, her skinny little legs picking their way across the uneven lawn. It took an age for the old lady to get to where they stood. “I'm so sorry, Erma,” she said, her voice breaking. “He was such a lovely man.”

Grandma shook her head and mumbled something that might have been “Thank you,” but Angel couldn't be sure.

Angel had imagined a funeral service like the ones she'd seen in movies, where the church was packed and people stood up and said nice things about the dead person. She thought she might even get the nerve to stand up and tell people that the star man was her friend, that he had taught her about the heavens. But they didn't go inside the white church with its tall, copper-colored steeple. They went directly to the cemetery on the other side of the building, where a fresh hole had been dug in the ground. On one side of the hole was a plain boxlike coffin with an American flag neatly folded on top, and on the other, a mound of moist dirt. Two men in work clothes stood a short distance away, leaning on shovels. The undertakers herded the tiny group of mourners to the casket. There were two folding chairs. Grandma was told quietly to sit in one and Miss Liza in the other.

There were only two other mourners. They wore heavy plaid jackets, big red workmen's hands poking out of the sleeves. Awkwardly, they came to Grandma's chair and introduced themselves. They said they had worked with Ray Morgan at the landfill. It was Miss Liza, not Grandma, who thanked them for coming.

“He was a good man,” one of them said, and the other nodded in agreement. Everyone thought Ray Morgan was a good man. Why hadn't Grandma been able to see it?

A short, bald man in a flowing black robe came out of the back of the church. He shook hands with each of them, murmured something Angel didn't catch, then opened a small black book and began to read out loud.

On this gray morning, with the late-autumn grass brown beneath her feet, it was hard to imagine that the star man lay in that box next to a gash in the cold earth. The star man should have been buried at night with all his stars dancing in attendance. She could believe that the shriveled man she had visited in the hospital, Grandma's son Ray Morgan, was dead, but how could she believe the magical star man was gone forever?

While the minister kept reading, she looked around at Morgan tombstones, some so old she could hardly make out the names and dates. It was funny to think of people being scared of graveyards. How could you be scared of a place that felt so quiet? There were big trees among the stones. The limbs were bare now, but she remembered seeing them last summer with their broad, leafy branches, almost inviting you to climb up into their laps.

Angel stood behind Miss Liza and Grandma. Grandma never raised her eyes from the ground. She had hardly spoken since they got the news of Ray Morgan's death. It was a good thing he'd made his own arrangements. Angel wouldn't have known what to do about getting him buried, and Grandma wouldn't have been of any use. And they didn't need a special car to bring them to the cemetery, no matter what the undertaker thought.

Miss Liza was crying softly, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. She had loved Ray Morgan, Angel felt sure of that. Maybe she was more like a mother to him than Grandma had been. Angel was glad he'd had Miss Liza to go to. She must have been the one who had taught him about the stars and told him he was kin to them.

The preacher was still reading from his book. “‘The Lord is my Shepherd,'” he began. Miss Liza and Eric joined in. They had the whole thing memorized. When they said something about the valley of the shadow of death, Grandma's shoulders began to shake. Angel reached out and grasped them tightly with both hands. She could feel the old woman's sobs through the wool of her overcoat, sobs so deep inside her that they couldn't even burst through to sound.

One of the undertakers took the flag off the coffin, and, when Grandma made no move to take it, he put it on her lap. Then he nodded at the men in work clothes, who came forward and lowered the coffin on ropes down into the grave. When it reached the bottom and the ropes were pulled up, the preacher stepped around the end of the dark hole and took a handful of dirt from the mound. He threw it onto Ray Morgan's coffin.

“Ashes to ashes,” he said. “Dust to dust.”

Tears filled Angel's eyes. She shook her head. No, she thought.
Astra to astra, stardust to stardust.

 

 

TWENTY

Grandma, please, you've got to eat something.”

Grandma lifted her chin from her chest and stared at Angel. Her eyes were lifeless. She was worse than she'd been when Bernie disappeared. Since the day they'd buried Ray, it was as though she'd dug a grave inside herself and was more dead than alive.

“Look, Grandma. I went to all the trouble to build up a good fire in the stove to make you some nice roast chicken, and you won't even come to the table.” No response. “I even made mashed potatoes. What do you want me to do? Pick you up and carry you over here?”

“I never went to see him in the hospital.” The old woman's face crumpled into her hands, and she began to cry.

“I'm sorry, Grandma.” She went to the rocker and patted Grandma's shaking shoulder. “I'm really sorry, but if you don't eat, you'll die, and then where will I be? I need you.”

The old woman snuffled. “Horsefeathers,” she muttered. “When did you ever need anybody?”

“No. It's the truth. I
do
need you. And what if—what if Bernie called, and you weren't here and Welfare has already taken me off somewhere? What would Bernie do then?” She shook Grandma's shoulder. “You got a responsibility, Grandma!”

“You got a lot of nerve.” Grandma pulled out a dingy handkerchief and blew her nose. “Well, help me up, girl. I'm stiff as starch.”

Grandma played with her food, but by begging and cajoling and threatening, Angel managed to get the old woman to take three bites of chicken and a spoonful of mashed potatoes. “Where's the gravy?” Grandma asked.

“If you eat two bites more, I promise you I'll make gravy tomorrow, okay? I swear, it's worse'n trying to make Bernie eat.”

“Hmmph.” Grandma gave a tiny hint of a grin.

***

She didn't mention the telescope to Grandma. She thought it better to wait for a while before talking about Ray's things, still over in the trailer. Besides, she didn't know how heavy it was, or whether she'd even be able to carry it from the trailer to the house. The first clear night after Ray's death, she visited the field. She knew he wouldn't be there. Still, something inside half hoped to see the star man.

It was a perfect night for viewing. He wasn't there, of course, but with her naked eye she picked out the great Andromeda Galaxy. If good people went to heaven when they died, that's where the star man would be—in that glorious cluster. He might be two million miles away, but he would always be there, burning bright among the stars of another galaxy.

“Hi, star man,” she whispered. “It's me, Angel. I won't ever forget you. Promise.”

***

Little by little, Grandma came back to life. “I'm too mean to die,” she said, which was probably true. She'd gotten along all that time on canned beans and peaches, hadn't she? Angel hated to leave her, but she had to go to school on weekdays and to the store and the library on Saturdays.

Miss Liza could be counted on to get her good books, including short, funny picture books that she could read aloud to Grandma. Sometimes she lingered longer than she should have talking to Miss Liza. They'd talk about Ray Morgan, about how he'd longed to go to college and become an astronomer but went, instead, to war, and in that short time lived through so much killing he drugged himself for years afterward, trying to dull the pain of all that horror.

Grandma was always grumpy when she was later than usual, suspecting that it was Miss Liza who had detained her, but Angel needed that time with the librarian more than she needed almost anything. On the Saturday after Ray's burial, Miss Liza read her his favorite poem. It was by a man named Robert Frost, who had lived in Vermont in the years when Ray was young.

The man was talking to a star, not wishing on a star but asking the star questions, as though he wanted to know what it was like to be a star, then finally realizing that the star wasn't explaining itself but asking something of
him.

 

“‘Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may take something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.'”

 

Excerpt from “Take Something Like a Star” from the book THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1949, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1977 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Used by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, LLC. CAUTION: Users are warned that this Selection is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the Selection via any medium must be secured from Henry Holt and Company, LLC.