Star Dust (5 page)

The children are fine
, she’d insisted—all while suspecting they weren’t.

Seeing them trying so hard to please her, she knew that they’d understood the depth of her unhappiness, no matter how hard she’d tried to hide it. She owed it to them to be happy, not merely to act like she was.

Maybe it would be better when they started school? Except then she’d be starting work. Her at work—ha! The thought was strange and freeing and itchy all at once. When her dad’s friend Mr. Chambers had offered her a place in his travel agency, it had seemed silly to refuse. What else was she going to do? And while there was money from Doug and her parents, she wanted to be independent.

She’d even let the kids eat dinner while watching television tonight. She’d hoped it would feel daring—everyone with a tray, in front of Red Skelton. Who needed that too-heavy formal dining room?

Instead, it had felt like they were each eating on their own. Like they weren’t a family.

She set a cigarette between her lips and fumbled with her lighter. She flicked it three times but no flame emerged.

“Need some help?”

She looked toward the shout. Across the darkness, sitting on his back patio, she could make out the outline of Kit Campbell. He’d been watching her for who knew how long. Of course.

She sighed and walked over to him. “Um, sure. If you don’t have company.”

“I’m alone.” The intimacy of the words pricked her skin.

He stood and fished a lighter out of his pocket. She stepped closer, trying not to think about the lack of space between them. The lighter crackled to life and she leaned into its glow. When her cigarette was lit, she looked up at him and inhaled sharply. His eyes were intent on her, searching for… something.

Before she could decide how to respond, the lighter snapped shut and they were plunged into darkness. She exhaled and could hear him shuffle away and then sit.

“There’re some more chairs if you want to stay.”

She didn’t. But she also didn’t want to go back to her house, back to the laundry and the quiet. So she fumbled until she found a chair as far from his as she could get.

“How’s your finger?” he asked.

She flexed it. “Better, thank you. I’m done with your pocketknife and scissors. I’ll bring them back soon.”

He didn’t answer, and so she looked up into sky. The moon was bright, floating in a great spill of stars. More almost than she remembered seeing. In her old Dallas neighborhood, there was too much light to make much out up there. She glanced across the patio at Kit Campbell, astronaut, but he was little more than a silhouette in the darkness.

“Do you often sit in the gloom?” she asked after a bit.

“There’s a light”—she could hear him gesture—“but I didn’t want to bother anyone.”

She laughed. “You didn’t have any neighbors until two days ago. Who would there be to bother? Or is it that you like the night sky?”

His chair creaked uncomfortably. Oh. She’d figured it out.

Without drawing attention to his non-answer, she craned back. There were so many stars. “What’s up there tonight?”

“Let’s see… I’d guess you know Orion. But over there, to the right of it, is Taurus. The bull.”

All she could see were a million points of light. They were pretty, sure, but she didn’t know what made any one special. “Over where? What am I looking for?”

“Follow Orion’s belt. It points to a—well, to something that resembles a letter Y centered around a bright red star. The points are his horns and his face.”

She squinted and puffed on her cigarette. Without much conviction, she said, “I see it.”

She understood why people were interested in space, but it had always felt like a test she failed. She looked up and saw… well, beauty. Vastness. But she didn’t see a bull.
The emperor has no clothes
. But you couldn’t say that to an astronaut.

So for a long time, they sat in silence. She puffed and watched the sky until she could, really could, see Orion taking aim at something. She stared at the flashing star, which did have a red tint. And she listened to the man across the patio breathing. Listened to him until she felt like she knew his mechanics.

But before she could figure him out, a furry form padded over to her and flopped its head into her lap.

“You have a dog?” She didn’t mean to sound so horrified, but it, the dog—were dogs so big?—was slobbering in her lap.

“May I introduce Buckshot?” She could tell Kit was trying not to laugh.

For herself, she was still trying to get used to the idea of a thing drooling in her lap. With all the dignity she could muster, she said, “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

Kit did laugh then. It was a warm, ingratiating sound that pooled in her stomach. The sensation increased when, in a husky voice, he said, “He can smell your fear.”

She considered sticking her tongue out at him. Kit, that was. The dog wouldn’t care. She could have gotten away with it under the cover of darkness, but grown-up ladies were supposed to behave better. She just reached up and gingerly rubbed Buckshot’s ears.

The dog rolled his head to the side and made an appreciative noise, which only deepened as she rubbed harder.

“Well, at least you’re very soft,” she told Buckshot. He rubbed his head against her lap and grunted. Since he wasn’t running away, she assumed that was affirmative.

When she looked up, she could tell Kit was watching her. She looked down, back at the dog, and ignored Kit’s gaze, heavy now on her.

“See, you’re a natural.” His words creaked. Not with disuse, though that too, but with… something else.

Without looking up or acknowledging it, she responded quickly and lightly. “I am not. The kids want a dog, and I keep telling them no.”

He scoffed. “Why? Kids and dogs go together like peanut butter and jelly.”

“Says the man who doesn’t clean his own floors.”

“I do too.”

“Hmm.” Her tone suggested that she didn’t believe him—which of course she didn’t. Doug certainly had never cleaned a floor. Neither had her father.

She shook off the things she was feeling and turned the conversation back to the stars. They were safer. “What’s that bull called again?”

“Taurus.”

A few more seconds of silence passed, then lightly she asked, “Is that where you’re going, Commander Campbell? Up to the stars?”

“It’s Kit. And yeah, that’s where I
want
to go.”

He didn’t sound proud. The words weren’t a brag—though he would have earned it. No, they were a bone-deep wish.

“Do you enjoy being an astronaut?”

“Yes,” he said after a long pause. And then he didn’t elaborate.

She’d learned the art of conversation in her mother’s River Oak sitting room. The key when talking to a man was always to ask about his job.
What do you do
? followed by
Oh, that sounds hard
. Those two comments could get a woman through almost any dinner party. They opened a door, and then they flattered.

But Kit evidently didn’t know the rules.

Well, if he didn’t, then she didn’t need to follow them. “You’ll forgive my observation, but that’s fewer words than
Life
generated about your smile.”

Her mother would be howling over that, but Anne-Marie didn’t care. She’d seen the man half-dressed, seen the woman he’d partied with. She could tease him.

“They sure can type over at
Life
.” His tone was mild, but she felt the embarrassment and the frustration underneath it. He didn’t seem to like the magazine’s commentary about him, and he liked even less her bringing it up.

“It is charming, you know. Your smile. Your entire affect, really,” she said soothingly. “And if it gets you to the stars, well, who cares what they write?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t worth it.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond. Most of what he’d said to her felt polished, like lines he used often, but this was different, not at all like in the
Life
interview or like a line he’d drop on a woman. He was still, almost rigid, as if he hadn’t meant to say the words and was surprised by himself. And if that were true, she wasn’t sure why he was sharing them now.

She was even less sure of what to do with them. When he knew so little about her—she wasn’t even certain if he knew she was divorced—the conversation felt lopsided. She could feel his vulnerability. She didn’t like it.

“You don’t think they’ll beat us up there?” she asked. “The Soviets?” A different kind of vulnerable, that question.
 

He shifted in his chair. She could feel the weight as he considered that. The heavy pause as he didn’t answer.

Oh God. Maybe the Soviets were further ahead than anyone realized. Maybe they would conquer space. The kids—what would happen to them, to all of them, if that happened?

“Of course they won’t,” he said. Jaunty, confident, but not nearly enough to fill the silence he’d created after her question. “How could we not win with the astronauts we have?”

She set her jaw. That wasn’t a real answer—she’d heard that exact same line in every press piece about the Perseid Six. Whatever honesty he’d been giving her had vanished, though perhaps this was a requirement of his job.

Then he said, “Do you need any help? With the move?”

The balance between them shifted again.

She sat up straighter. “Someone told you?”

“That there’s no Mr. Smith?”

She crossed her legs and then her arms, and Buckshot stumbled away. “There is a Mr. Smith. He just isn’t
my
Mr. Smith.”

“Yes,” Kit said very softly. “Someone told me.”

“I don’t need any help.”

“All right.”

She snuffed her cigarette out on the paving stones and rose. “I don’t know why everyone has trouble believing that I’m fine on my own.”

She started to storm off, but he stood and caught her hand in both of his. He was warm, much warmer than anyone should be on a February evening, even in Texas.

“I mean it.” The words abraded the skin of her wrist, and the fingers of her free hand curled. “I’m willing to help you. With anything.”

The bastard. It wasn’t that she hadn’t had this offer before. Oh no, the main thing men seemed to know for certain about divorcees was that they had unfulfilled… needs. And they were just the men for the job.

The only thing that was different this time was that some tiny voice inside her wanted her to say yes.

Thank goodness she was too old to listen to it. “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.” Her voice dripped with condescension.

He ignored it. “No trouble at all.” He dipped his head as if he were going to kiss her arm.

She snapped her hand back. “But can you fit me in? Let’s see, you have the stars, all of Houston’s blondes, and that’s not to mention
Life
. You’re a busy man, Commander Campbell.”

And with that, she flitted home.

The next morning, Anne-Marie knelt in the nearly empty flowerbed in front of her house. She was taking a break from the unpacking to plant daffodil bulbs. That was what she needed: bright explosions of yellow. Her mother was convinced that it was too late in the season and they wouldn’t bloom, but Anne-Marie was hopeful.

She must be over the divorce. Sad, lonely divorcees didn’t go in for bulbs—the payoff was too far away, and flowers brought romance to mind. She was happy enough to handle the wait and well-adjusted enough to think of love without bitterness. By the time these daffodils bloomed, this would be a real home for the kids and her. She knew it.

She finished digging a spray of holes, then grabbed a small bag of sand and went about tipping a bit into each. When that was done, she clambered to her feet to find the bag of bulbs. Her movements were a bit slower than she would have liked. Her thirties were creeping up on her. She could shake her head to dismiss the thought all she liked—time marched on. But never mind her thirties! She was putting in bulbs. Or she would be once she found them.

She shook her leg, trying to wake it up, and her knee popped as if to spite her and emphasize that she was going to age no matter what.

“You’re not that old,” she said to her knee and herself.

But when she turned—where had the bag from the hardware store gotten to?—she found Kit Campbell, he of the space exploration and the fruitless propositions, standing on the sidewalk watching her. He was dressed as if he were planning to go for a jog. Of course he jogged. That was how he maintained his playboy body.

Her jaw clenched and she clutched her trowel more tightly. What did he want?

“I wouldn’t say you’re old at all, Mrs. Smith,” he called. He licked his lips and let his eyes travel down her body. When he made eye contact again, he lifted a brow in admiration.

It was too much. He was just trying to annoy her now. “How comforting, Commander Campbell, coming from a man of at least forty.”

“Thirty-four.”

She knew his age well enough thanks to
Life
, but she enjoyed making him correct her.

He didn’t seem annoyed, however. He was mostly trying not to laugh—and this infuriated her even more.

“What are you doing?” he asked.