The Half-Life of Planets (13 page)

The lab is dark and still
except for the light over my work table. One of the faucets drips into a steel basin, the
plunk plunk
sound the only thing audible, save for my own nerves. Why didn't I tell him sooner? Beach walks, personal food preferences, lyrics, hours' and days' worth of conversational connection. But no kissing. I should have explained earlier—over coffee, or at his house, anywhere. I mean, what's the point of keeping stuff from people when they're supposed to be your—your what? Friend? Boyfriend? Hi, I have a dead sister. I told him that. Told him about entering Slutsville, but I just can't bring myself to tell him about my summer experiment. I shake my head and focus back on my notes, which I am turning into a paper. A world of extra credit doesn't make the people floating in it make any more sense.

I transcribe from my journal:
All planets are very faint light sources, especially when you compare them to their parent stars. Detecting such faded light sources is not only difficult, but because the parent star is bright, the already dim light gets washed out. That's why there have been so few documented and seen extrasolar planets.

“What's an extrasolar planet?” my dad asks. He's been standing near me for a good five minutes, but I'm pretending to be engrossed in work so I can take a few minutes to process why he'd show up at the lab, mid-day, unannounced.

“It's a planet beyond the solar system,” I say, and close my notebook. The sound echoes. What does it mean that I am old enough now to know things my parents don't? When did they stop being pillars of information, supreme beings who contain infinite wisdom?

In the background I hear the
plunk plunk
of water dripping, but I try to tune it out. I bet Hank wouldn't be able to let go of the noise and we'd have to run around testing each sink to find the leaky culprit. We'd have one of those movie montages where there's a cool song over shots of us running on the beach, or pouncing from one leaky sink to the next, laughing all doubled over, the whole thing culminating in a moment where we splash each other with the dripping sink water and wind up kissing. I should have made it clear to him right away. But how could I when I wasn't sure about it myself?

Hank will bolt, most likely. Or worse, do the guy thing of hanging around enough so he doesn't seem like a total ass who was in it just for the score, but then slowly fade out—a star gone awry. “Why don't people just say what they need to say?” I blurt out, and the expanse of air in the lab makes my words seem too important, especially to my dad, who isn't the person I'm supposed to confront.

“You're right, Li,” Dad says, and leans with both palms on the soapstone. “People should express themselves. Information needs to be shared.” He sounds like one of his motivational mugs. “That's why I'm here.…”

I furrow my brow. “What?”

Dad pushes his fingers through his hair. It's thinning at the top but still there on the sides. “I have to go in for more tests. There's an advanced screening process…LDL levels aside, I might have some blockage—”

“Blockage?” I start to laugh. Not big laughs, but the word is funny.
Blockage
. Maybe we all have blockage. I was blocked, Hank, that's why I didn't tell you. Dad purses his lips. The idea that my full-grown alive dad is having yet more psychodrama that requires tests is so annoying I can't help but laugh again.

“It's not exactly a humorous matter.” Dad shoots me a look. “How would you like it if I laughed about your health?” I make a rumpled face to show I am sorry, even if his imaginary illnesses are beyond grating. “Fine. So
your
health isn't the topic here, but still—I feel that you have the right to know about what's happening in this family.”

I pause, looking at the planets floating above. Dangling from fishing wire, Saturn, Neptune, all of their solar buddies swing free in the lab's open ceiling space. “The Sun's not the only star that planets orbit. Did you know that?” I ask, standing up and collecting my stuff. “No one thinks about the other stars, or the other planets, but they're out there.” I sigh and look at my dad. “I'm sorry you have to have more tests.” And I
am
sorry about that. But I'm sorrier that something in my father makes him need to probe and test and worry all the time about his body, which is actually fine. But at least he told me. I need to tell Hank. So I say to my dad, since he's here and Hank's not, “How come you always think something's wrong with you?”

I've never asked him anything like that. It sounds insulting, and maybe it is, kind of, even though I really do wonder why. Dad rubs his hands together as though we're by a campfire or anywhere cozy rather than an echoing laboratory. “Something could be,” he says softly.

I don't ask more. Maybe he will let the question sink in, brew a while, and have more to say another time. My heart thuds, my whole self knowing I have to tell Hank or I'll explode. Sunsets, music, baked goods, coffees, they're all okay. They are better than okay. They are planet-big and full and leading somewhere, but not to the land of lip-lock.

I jab my dad's ribs with my notebook. “Or it could be something else, right?” He waits for me to go on. “There are all these patterns…” I begin but can't finish. Because his pattern, and my pattern, and my mother's baking, and Hank's chording, they're all too connected right now.

“Would you rather not know about the tests?” Dad asks, and holds the heavy door for us both.

“No, I want to know.”

I will tell him. I half close my eyes to the intense sunlight.

I'm always disoriented coming out of the lab; it's like time doesn't move in there—only, I know it moves because the sun is lower, Hank's working a long day hocking guitars or sheet music, and right now I realize what I need to do. Right now. No hesitating. “I gotta go to Planet Guitar,” I tell my dad.

He looks pale, draws a big breath. I wish his worries didn't get to him so much. “Give me a lift home first, though, okay?” He pauses. “I was going to walk, but I think it'd be better if I got a ride.” He takes my arm like a blind person would, a light grip but needy. “You getting an acoustic?”

“No. No. I'm not—I don't play guitar. You know that.” My heart pounds. Not because my dad is home from work days early, or because he's having more tests, but because this is it: I will go to Planet Guitar and tell Hank—just get it out in the open before the official meeting-the-mother dinner. Before the lamb chops or salad or burgers and family fun. Before I sit through some solar system show or venture into a dark movie theater or listen to some song that just makes me forget all the parameters of my no-kiss rule and lay one on him. Our lips can't meet, I'll tell him. Maybe there's a song I can think of that will explain it for me. I buckle my seat belt and lean over to open my dad's door.

My dad is a great editor, a grammarian like no other, and back before he began his frequent-flier accruing, he was that English teacher you always wished you had. The kind that students keep in touch with, to whom they dedicate their novels or credit with their future successes. So when I think about how to tell Hank, I run it by my father first, just because he's here. “If you need to tell someone something and you use someone else's words to do it…” I start, my mind churning over lyrics—but all I can think of is songs that result in kissing, not ones that avoid it. “Kiss on My List,” “I Want Your (Hands on Me),” “These Lips,” “Melding Mouths.” Not helpful. “Say if you found the perfect words but…”

“It's plagiarism,” Dad butts in.

“No, but if it's not like an academic assignment—”

“It's still plagiarism.” He looks at his hands and then at my face. Even though he's not a teacher anymore, sometimes he still seems that way. I wonder if I still seem slutty, even though I'm not. If you ever get past what you were. Then it hits me that my dad used to be a father of two and then he wasn't. Isn't. If maybe on those medical forms he fills out all the time he has to pause when it says to list the names and ages of your kids. “Liana.” Dad says my name and keeps his eyes on mine. I wonder if he looked at my sister this way ever, his eyes probing, his gaze so tender and comforting that I could cry but I wouldn't.

“I just meant a song. Like in the movies, when they sum up a moment by putting a soundtrack to it.” I back up out of the parking lot and head toward home.

“When something's important enough, you kind of have to force yourself to say it. Not pass the buck Hallmark-style.” He raises his eyebrows. His tone switches to sitcom dad. “Is there something I should know?”

I shake my head deliberately, slowly, looking in my rearview mirror. I can do it myself. Without lyrics. I can bring Hank whatever my mother's got going in the oven. Brownies. Cookies. Doesn't she say that everything can be solved with a good cookie? Where's that pamphlet? I swallow, picturing Hank's face when I blurt it out. I have to pick a good time. A normal time. Now. And I'll take care of it. Because it is important; it's not something that will fade out like a dying planet or passing song. But I'll just say it simply: we cannot kiss.

I am glad for the distraction of work.
It prevents me from obsessing about Liana's visit tonight and the kiss that will follow. Or, I should say, it gives me something else to do while obsessing about Liana's visit tonight and the kiss that will follow.

Of course, Liana has been to my house before, but that was a more informal drop-in kind of thing and did not involve a meal. Due to everyone's schedule, it's rare that we eat dinner together, and I cannot remember the last time we had someone other than me, Chase, or Mother at the table with us. Chase's relationships never last long enough for a girl to merit this kind of treatment. In fact Chase, uncharacteristically awake before ten, both apologized for being mean to me in the hall, and revealed that he had been drinking from late in the evening until early in the morning in order to get over the stress of his breakup with Nurse Patti in the early evening. Apparently she was more than a little upset and began to throw Precious Moments figurines at Chase. “I swear to God, she was aiming for my bad knee. Psycho!”

“That would certainly seem to be a violation of the Hippocratic oath, though I suppose that might just be for doctors,” I chime in.

Chase looks at me for a long moment, then says, “Hank, man, I love you, but you're just on a different planet from me.” He pauses, grins, and says, “Or, should I say, you're on a different Pluh-net from me.”

“Ah,” I say, “you've gone after the mother. Interesting choice. Definitely stepping outside of your usual type. And a married woman to boot.”

“No, dorkus, I meant—”

“I know, Chase. I was making a joke.”

“Well, you can forgive me for not getting it. It's pretty hard to tell with your delivery, you know.”

“No,” I say. “I don't.”

I left him to ponder this and headed in to work. I've just made my first sale of the day, a midline wah-wah pedal, when the door opens and Liana comes in with a plate full of cookies.

“Hey!” I say. “What are you doing here?” I wish I had a mirror so I could check my face. Not that I'd know what to look for, but if I could at least be convinced that I couldn't see any evidence of my masturbatory fantasy, it would be comforting.

“Nice to see you too,” she says.

“Oh, yes, it's always nice to see you. I figured that went without saying, but I suppose it doesn't go without saying after all. I just meant that it was surprising to see you. Because you didn't say you were coming.” She has not run screaming from me. Apparently my thoughts of yesterday afternoon remain opaque to her. This is a tremendous relief.

“Well, you stalked me at the lab; I figured I should stalk you at the guitar store. Plus I want to see your true love.”

Look in a mirror, for God's sake, I want to say, but I don't. Instead I sputter, “I…you want to…I…”

“The Jazzmaster,” she says, looking around the store. She studies the east wall, where the new guitars hang, completely ignoring the vintage guitars on the west wall.

“Oh. Right. That. I…uh, can I take, I mean, I sort of assume that the cookies are for me because you've brought me delicious baked goods in the past, but I don't want to—”

“Take them. Please. They're oatmeal chocolate chip with cherries. I hate dried fruit.”

“I dislike the brown dried fruits. I hate dates, figs, and raisins, but I like apricots and cherries.”

“What about dried apples?”

“Light brown. They're okay.”

“Okay, but you can't possibly like dried pineapple. Nobody on earth likes that.” She tugs at a strand of hair with one hand, then lets it go, then tugs it again. I'm fairly certain this is a social cue.

“I like it, provided it's not covered in sugar. Which it usually is. Those candied cubes of pineapple are disgusting. But the pineapple's natural sweetness—”

“Can I just see the guitar already?” She continues to tug at her hair. It occurs to me that this may be the “I wish he would make a move” signal, but that can't happen until tonight.

“Sure,” I say. “And thank you for the cookies.” I bite into one, and it's delicious.

“Stan,” I call out. “Can I play the Jazzmaster?”

“No way,” Stan barks from the rear of the store.

“I'll give you a fresh home-baked cookie!”

“What kind?”

“Oatmeal chocolate chip cherry.”

“Make it three of those and you've got a deal.” I glance at the plate that surely holds two dozen cookies. I can certainly spare three. I take Stan the cookies, and he peeks out onto the floor. “Hank. My man. I would blow off work for her, too. And,” he mumbles, mouth half filled with cookie. “Mmm! She makes amazing cookies. That's a keeper right there.”

“Well, her mom made the cookies, but she is certainly a keeper. The daughter, I mean. I mean, well, I assume the mother, in the eyes of her father, would be a keeper, obviously, since they've been together for—”

“Okay. Stop talking to me and go impress her, for God's sake.”

“Right. Okay,” I say, and turn around to where Liana is looking at a cherry red guitar.

“This isn't it, is it?”

“No, that's a Gibson Flying V. It's got a pretty metal look to it, but I personally am not crazy about the sound. Though of course I suppose it's remarkable that both Bob Mould and Albert King could play the same guitar and get such different—”

“Where's the Jazzmaster?” she asks.

“Albert King plays it with his right arm in the crook of the V.” I could not stop myself from saying that part. Though I tried. “Here's the Jazzmaster.”

I delicately take it from the wall and plug it in. “I'm thinking about doing this one for Beachfest,” I say. “Though of course it'll sound better when I have all the right effects and stuff.”

Liana makes that hurry-up-already motion with her hands, and I start playing “Pipeline.” And for approximately three minutes, everything falls away. Liana is gone, the rest of the store is gone, the cookies, Stan, everything disappears except for me, six strings, and a really big whammy bar. I mess up a little on the bridge and wince, but I'm able to recover and get through to the end.

When I finish the song, I kind of come back to the world, and Liana is standing there with her mouth hanging open. I'm embarrassed.

“I know. I messed up on the bridge, and I mean, I can hear the bass and drums in my head, so it sounds better to me. I'm thinking of maybe using an old drum machine I—”

“Will you shut up? That was awesome! I knew you played guitar, but I had no idea you could play like that! Hank! You rock!”

I see Stan at the back of the store giving me two thumbs up. “Yeah,” I say. “I guess I do, sometimes. Under the right circumstances.”

Sadly, Liana can't stay at Planet Guitar all day, so she goes to the lab, I finish a pretty slow day at work, and then I go home to find Mother in full-bustle mode.

I walk in the door, and Mother is yelling to no one in particular, “I mean, this kind of thing drives me crazy. There is a gigantic energy drink can two feet from the recycling bin. I really can't understand the thought process! You got that far, and it was just too much to make it the last two feet? Jesus, guys, we're having a girl over here. Girls notice things. I don't want her to think we live like pigs, even if we actually do.”

Mother picks up the can and puts it in the recycling bin. “Actually, Mother, I saw Chase shoot that can, basketball style. It actually hit the rim of the recycling bin. So that's why it's not in the bin.”

“Okay, but then neither one of you thinks to pick the damn thing up! I mean, you know, it's not like I don't feel guilty about how much I have to work. You guys have to pile crap up everywhere to remind me what a bad mother I am. I just wish—”

“That you and Nana didn't hate each other so much and that you would be the recipient of some of Nana and Granddad's largesse, not just Chase and me?” The tension between Mother and Nana, my father's mother, is obvious even to me. Perhaps this is because it often results in shouting. Also obvious is the fact that we live here in West Melville and Mother feels obligated to work a great deal of overtime, and Nana and Granddad live in a palatial house in East Melville with a private beach. Chase and I used to spend the night there sometimes, but that hasn't happened since 2003.

“Hank, Nana and I don't hate each other. We just—she had ideas about who your dad was and what he was going to do, and I was an unacceptable diversion from her plan. But yeah, some largesse would be nice. I mean, if your dad were still here—”

I don't like where this is going. “Liana likes root beer in glass bottles. I am going to walk down to the store and buy a six-pack. Shall I pick up anything else for you while I'm gone?”

“You know, if you could manage to just pick up your socks once in a while, that would be a big help.”

“Consider it done, Mother,” I say, already out the door before she can start back on her line of conversation.

I grab the root beer, and by the time I return, Mother is obsessing about dinner and no longer obsessing about the state of the house. I, of course, am obsessing about dinner and what comes after. I want nothing more than to pace around the house and tug at my hair, but I force myself to go to the basement and pick up the guitar.

“There's nothing to be afraid of,” I tell myself, but I am afraid. I'm afraid of failure, of course, but also of success. Either way, everything changes tonight, and I'm afraid of change. It's uncomfortable.

I hear Ray Davies in my brain saying that he doesn't feel afraid, and I begin playing The Kinks' “Waterloo Sunset.” I love the guitar intro, and I love the idea of not feeling afraid. I play the song over and over, and yet I still feel afraid.

Finally, finally, Liana arrives. I open the door. She's holding flowers.

“Hello!” I say. “I must say I've never received flowers before, but I certainly appreciate—”

“They're for your mom, Hank. Flowers for the table. It's polite.”

“Oh.” She's staring at my hands, which are chording frantically.

“Whatcha playing?” she asks, pointing at my hand and smiling.

“‘Waterloo Sunset.' The Kinks. From the album
Something Else by The Kinks
.”

“Oh, right. I don't really know that band. But we have it, that album, I mean. In the basement. Along with about six other Kinks albums.”

“Wow! Have you ever listened to them?”

“No—they're—let's just say there's a lot of stuff in our basement we don't exactly deal with.”

“You know, if you ever wanted to bring them over, I'd be happy to digitize them for you. I mean, I don't know which albums you have. I personally think it's kind of all downhill after
Muswell Hillbillies
, but—”

“Hey.”

“Yeah? Fan of
One for the Road
? Many people are, but—”

“Hank.”

“Um. Yes?”

“Are we gonna dine on the stoop here, or do I get to come in?”

“Oh, right, of course. You're standing on the doorstep. Mother will be horrified at my rudeness. Or else assume we're making—I, uh, please come in.”

Liana comes into the kitchen. I'm glad she's here, but at the same time, I'm horribly uncomfortable. Mother comes rushing over and extends a hand, introduces herself, and tells Liana isn't she sweet for bringing flowers, she didn't have to do that.

“I'm really sorry about the state of the house. You know, since Hank and Chase's dad died, I've had to work a lot, and I don't exactly get the help I need around here, so it's just me part-time trying to keep up with the full-time mess two boys make. Well, you can imagine.”

“Your—I had no idea. I'm so sorry.” Liana looks at me. She's frowning. I assume this is because she is expressing sympathy.

“Oh. I. Thank you. I just assumed Hank would have told you.”

I look at Liana, but she isn't looking at me. She is staring at the flowers she brought, which are sitting on a chair near the door, waiting for Mother to find some water for them.

Mother turns to me. “Hank? Can you help me in the kitchen? Liana, just make yourself at home. I won't keep him long.”

“I got root beer,” I say. “In glass bottles. Can I bring you one from the kitchen when I'm done helping Mother?”

“Mmm,” she says. She's still looking at the flowers.

“I'll take that as a yes,” I say, and head into the kitchen.

Mother stands there, hands on hips, and I head to the fridge to grab the root beer.

“Hank, are you trying to…Look, I know you don't like to talk about it, but especially when she's shared stuff with you, you can't just keep stuff like that private. Not in a relationship.”

“Stuff like what?”

“Cut it out, goddammit. Did you see the look on that girl's face? She looked like she'd been kicked!”