The Dream Life of Astronauts (21 page)

“Ha ha!” Gail blurted, reaching down to smooth the girl's bangs against her forehead. “If you made any sense, I'd have a heart attack.”

Mr. Burgher smiled at Becca, then smiled at Gail. “I wonder if you might benefit from a private driving lesson.”

S
he'd torn off a corner of her Certificate of Completion, written her phone number on it, and palmed it to him while they were saying goodbye. And now, just watch: two weeks would pass, then three, and during all that time she would think about Billy Burgher, each and every day, and he wouldn't call. That was just the way some men were: interested when you were standing right in front of them and oblivious to whether you lived or died once you were out of their sight. And he was married, wasn't he?
Most definitely,
he'd said, but that was an odd way to say you were married. If she fluttered her mind's eye, she couldn't be entirely certain there'd been a ring on his finger.

It didn't matter, because he wasn't going to call. She told herself this over breakfast, muttered the words aloud while power walking through the mall.
It doesn't matter. He's not going to call.

But two days after the class, while Becca was at school and Gail was at home bent over the bathtub with a bottle of Tilex and a scrub brush, she heard the phone ring from the bedroom and then this smoky voice rising out of the answering machine. She banged her knee against the side of the tub getting up. “Lord almighty,” she said, limping toward the phone. “Hello?”

“Is this Gail?”

She sat down on the bed. “Yes, it is. Who's calling?”

He could have said his full name. He could have reminded her where it was they'd met. Instead—an encouraging sign, she thought later—he said only, “Billy.”

“Oh, Billy! I'm so glad you called.”

He chuckled. “Why's that?”

Tilex was running down her wrist toward her elbow. She angled her arm so that the scrub brush was over the floor and not the bedspread. “Your class made me realize how I really do need a hands-on refresher about road safety.”

“Never hurts,” he said.

“Seriously, I'm a menace behind the wheel.”

“Just remember the old adage,” he said. Then he cleared his throat and went quiet, as if he couldn't remember the old adage.

“To err is human?” she offered.

“All learning starts with unlearning,” he said.

“Is that right? Well, there are a few things I've learned to do quite well that I wouldn't want to unlearn—know what I mean?” She waited for him to run with this; he didn't. “Anyway, you're the teacher.”

He suggested three o'clock on Saturday, and she told him that would be perfect. She would arrange for a sitter and be free as a bird. Should they meet back at the high school, for old times' sake?

“I'll be in a white Mustang in the Denny's parking lot,” he said, and then clarified: not the local Denny's, but the one two towns over, in Titusville.

B
ecca's grandmother was wearing her church dress and had gotten a new hairdo that was rounder and higher than Becca had ever seen it. The whole inside of the car smelled like hairspray. She'd asked Becca what she wanted to bring to Mrs. Kerrigan's, and when Becca had told her nothing, her grandmother had said, “Nonsense,” and had taken a grocery bag from under the kitchen sink and filled it with Safari Suzie, Safari Steve, and all their safari equipment. She'd added a
My Little Pony
activity book and a matching glitter pen she'd bought at the drugstore.

The paper bag sat next to Becca on the backseat, its top rolled up and crinkled.

“You're going to be nice to Mrs. Kerrigan,” her grandmother said, “because I'll pluck you bald if you're not. Mrs. Kerrigan is a sad, lonely woman, and she doesn't need to hear anything idiotic coming out of your mouth. You understand me, baby girl? No shenanigans.”

After her mother had moved away, Becca had been switched from Freedom 7 Elementary School to Tropical Elementary, which was closer to her grandmother's house. Becca preferred being in school to being at home. At Tropical, nobody threatened to pluck her bald. Nobody warned her not to say idiotic things. Half her class thought she was from Paris, France (she was very good at fake French).

“Are you listening to me? I thought I told you to put that bag on the floor.”

“You didn't.”

“God, I'm looking forward to being around somebody new. That's not a reflection on you, honey; I'm talking about men. Somebody who appreciates a grown woman's company!”

“Your hair smells,” Becca said.

From the front of the car, her grandmother shot her a look in the rearview mirror.

“It does. It's making me sick.”

“Stop it,” her grandmother said. “That's exactly what I'm talking about, that sarcasm you think is so cute. You're not going to ruin today for me.
Nothing
is going to ruin today. Do you know what you are?”

They were sitting at a red light. As soon as the light turned green, the car behind them honked and they both flinched. Her grandmother tried to honk back, but this wasn't her car, it was the car they'd given her while hers was in the shop being fixed, and she pushed the wrong spot on the steering wheel.

“Bastard,” she muttered, moving the car forward. She found Becca again in the mirror. “You're a hardheaded girl who's actually nice, deep down, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you're going to start enjoying life.”

Becca traced a finger over the flower petals printed on the skirt of her jumper. She'd decided that if she didn't like it at Mrs. Kerrigan's house, if it was as boring as it had been the last time, she would pretend to be poisoned. She would moan and clutch her stomach, and she would scream if Mrs. Kerrigan tried to touch her. She would become delirious, start flailing, and break something precious. Then, while Mrs. Kerrigan was weeping because whatever Becca had broken was irreplaceable, Becca would dump all the toys out of the bag, fill it with food from Mrs. Kerrigan's refrigerator, and leave. She would find a bus station and get on a bus that would take her to the airport, and at the airport she would follow some woman who was about to get on a plane to Paris, and as soon as the woman boarded the plane, Becca would start crying,
“Mamá! Mamá!”
and push her way through the other passengers. She would slip into one of the bathrooms on the plane, and by the time the stewardesses figured out she was a stowaway, they'd be airborne, nothing to be done about it. In Paris, she would buy two postcards of the Eiffel Tower and send one to her mother in California and the other to her grandmother in Florida, and both postcards would say the same thing:
You had me to lose.
She didn't know what this meant, exactly, but a lady in a TV movie had written it in a goodbye note to her fiancé, and the words had left him teary eyed and speechless.

On the front porch of the Kerrigan house, her grandmother rang the doorbell and then reached down and straightened Becca's collar. “Best behavior,” she reminded her. “We're nice people who do nice things, and if you want to see daylight again before your ninth birthday—”

The front door swung open.

“Hello, Teresa!” her grandmother said.

The person on the other side of the screen door wasn't Mrs. Kerrigan but a withered-looking man with a small beak of a nose pushing out of his face and dark, curly hair scattered around his head. His bathrobe was untied, and between its folds was a pair of floppy camouflage shorts and a T-shirt whirlpooled with colors—as if someone had melted down every crayon in the box and swirled a finger through the puddle.

“Friend or foe?” he asked, squinting through the screen.

“What in the—” Becca's grandmother said, then exhaled. “We're the Nicholsons. Can you please tell Mrs. Kerrigan we're here?”

“Friend or foe?” The bird man didn't sound mean or challenging; he sounded curious.

“For godsake, we're
friends.
”

He receded into the house.

“I don't have time for this,” Becca's grandmother said, glancing at her watch.

“I'm not a Nicholson,” Becca told her. “I'm a Watley.” She'd been meaning to announce this for a while now.

“Oh, come down off your magic cloud. Brian Watley is hardly what I'd call a proper father. He didn't get around to marrying your mother until after you were born, and then he took off a year later—and good riddance. Anyway, would it be the end of the world if you took my name?”

“Was that Mrs. Kerrigan's husband?”

“I doubt it. She doesn't have one.”

“Maybe she got married since the last time we were here.”

“And maybe I'm the man on the moon.” Her grandmother's voice dropped to something between a groan and a whisper. “I told you, she's sad and lonely. Who knows, maybe she got so lonely she's started taking in strays.”

“I'm sorry!” a voice called from inside the house. “I'm coming!”

And then Mrs. Kerrigan appeared and pushed open the screen door.

“Well, hello there,” Becca's grandmother said brightly. She tapped Becca's shoulder. “Say hello.”

“Bonjour,”
Becca said.

“Please come in,” Mrs. Kerrigan said. “I was out back and didn't realize you were here.” They entered the house, which smelled to Becca just like her grandmother's hairspray—until she realized it was still her grandmother's hairspray she was smelling. Mrs. Kerrigan's own hair wasn't done up at all; it was gray and parted in the middle and hung down either side of her head like two horse tails. “Becca, have you gotten taller?”

“Je guess,”
Becca said.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“Nothing for me, thanks,” Becca's grandmother said. “I'm going to be late if I don't scoot. Did I tell you what I'm doing?”

She proceeded to tell Mrs. Kerrigan all about the car accident, which she said was Becca's fault, and about the driving-school man, and about how he'd been calling and asking to see her and wanted to give her a free driving lesson. By the time she was done talking, they were all sitting around the living room except for the bird man, who was at the dining room table hunched over a notebook, scratching at it with a pencil.

“Well, I hope you and Mr. Burgher have a pleasant afternoon,” Mrs. Kerrigan said.

“I do, too,” Becca's grandmother said. “In fact, more than pleasant would be all right with me. But what do I know about people? They're all puzzles.” She glanced toward the dining room. “For instance, who's that man?”

“That's my youngest, Frankie,” Mrs. Kerrigan said. “You've seen his picture.”

Becca watched her grandmother's head crane forward an inch or two as she gazed at the bird man. “I wouldn't have guessed that for a million dollars,” she said. “I thought he lived in the Panhandle.”

“He used to. He moved home about a month ago.”

“Huh.” Becca's grandmother returned her voice to its whisper-groan. “What happened to him?”

“Nothing,” Mrs. Kerrigan said. “He just lives here now.”

“Is he not well?”

Even Becca knew this was an awful thing to ask, especially when the bird man was sitting right there within earshot. She felt her face heat up as she clutched the paper bag.

Mrs. Kerrigan moved her chin in a little figure eight without saying anything. Then she said, “He's been under the weather, yes. Some problems with his immune system.”

“Oh, sweetheart. I'm so sorry.”

“It's not airborne.”

“No, no, I know. I saw
Philadelphia.
”

“I actually think he might be on the upswing,” Mrs. Kerrigan said.

“Say no more.” Becca's grandmother patted both her knees and stood. “I just want you to know it means the world to me, Teresa, you watching this little firecracker for an afternoon.”

“We'll have fun,” Mrs. Kerrigan said. “Won't we, Becca?”

“Moi stomage ez hurt avec poison,”
Becca said—but without much enthusiasm. Pretending to be poisoned had lost some of its appeal now that she knew the bird man was sick with something.

He lifted his head and announced from the dining room,
“Nuzwah fear, mon guest. Antidotus miracallus voot be toi!”

“I shouldn't be but a few hours,” her grandmother said.

M
rs. Kerrigan put a cassette tape into the stereo—something without words, all soupy horns. The bird man led Becca into the kitchen, where he offered her a stool at the counter beneath the pass-through and then stood mixing orange juice, mayonnaise, and coffee grounds into an empty Smucker's jar. After inspecting the results and adding a dash of milk, he handed the jar to Becca, who wished she'd never mentioned being poisoned.
“Voila!”
he said.

“Je feeling bet-wah,”
Becca said.

“No, no,”
the bird man said.
“Voo complexion ez tereeblah.”

Was he fooling with her? Or was he crazy in addition to being sick? She raised the jar and swallowed the smallest sip she could manage. Her shoulders rippled.

“Le miracle du science!”
he exclaimed.

“I speak English,” Becca confessed.

“Me, too. Want to see my design for a machine that can communicate with rats?”

“Can we eat real food?” Becca asked Mrs. Kerrigan.

The three of them sat at the dining room table and drank soda and ate Cheetos, pretzels, and Vienna Fingers while the bird man showed Becca his design. Biomagnetic receptors, he explained, would be noninvasively fixed to the heads of rats in order to record their neural oscillations. The oscillations would then be translated into a mathematic scaffold corresponding to our own alphabet, and that scaffold, measured against a formula he'd designed using multiples of seven, would produce a blueprint for a shared system of language. In the notebook, he'd drawn several pictures of rats wearing helmets wired to what looked like car batteries. Surrounding the pictures were numbers—so many of them that there was barely any white space left on the page.