The Half-Life of Planets (2 page)

The girl in the squeeze shirt
leaves me in the bathroom with a stain on my crotch. The stain on my notebook from “Black Coffee in Bed” was actually the second thing that popped into my mind when I saw her T-shirt.

When you see a girl with the word
Squeeze
written across her breasts, well, the band that gave us “Tempted,” and, more importantly, “In Quintessence” is not the first thing that comes to mind. Even for me.

But I did not blurt out “Is that the band or just instructions?” because I paid attention to my surroundings and I tried to listen. I paused for a moment and realized that my surroundings were the ladies' room, where I wasn't supposed to be, which is actually just a men's room with a menstrual-supply dispenser on the wall and no urinals.

I've been trying to think about how other people might react to what I say. In this case, the other person was the girl with the breasts—well, they all have breasts, but few have breasts like this girl's breasts—might think that my barging into the ladies' room and making a breast joke meant that I was a weirdo.

I have some experience with people thinking I'm a weirdo. One day in seventh grade, a bunch of kids who used to threaten me for no reason that I could ever figure out decided to chant “Freak! Freak! Freak! Freak!” while pointing at me.

“The dance is called Le Freak, if you ever listened to the song, and while I appreciate the invitation, I'm not going to dance for you!”

They did not laugh at my joke, but neither did they continue their taunts. So, overall, I counted it as a successful interaction.

Of course, I wanted to explain to somebody how Chic, who recorded “Le Freak,” also provided the music behind The Sugarhill Gang's “Rapper's Delight,” though of course it was “Good Times” and not “Le Freak” that they were rapping over. But this would be pearls before swine as far as the middle school lunchroom taunters went.

I have had similar experiences with girls. Well, when I say I've had experiences with girls, I should make it clear that what I'm talking about are conversations. Or maybe not even that—I'm not sure what you call it when one person starts talking about a topic of interest only to find out the other person has no interest in that topic and walks away from the conversation. This is how most of my interactions with girls go.

Except for this one. She had a T-shirt, and despite the fact that she kept tugging on it, which stretched the word
Squeeze
even tighter across her breasts and also drew my eyes to her womanly hips, where her tugging hands were taking up residence, I managed to follow one of Allie's recommendations:
Find a common interest. Make a connection.
We had a conversation that, despite the location, felt fairly normal, or what I imagine normal to be.

Back to the bathroom, where I'm not supposed to be: I splash some water on my crotch and blot it with paper towels until at least the stain on my pants is just wet and not wet
and
black. I decide that the hand dryer might help me with the remaining wetness, so I hit the button and angle my hips toward the stream of hot air, trying to get it directly on my crotch.

This is when my mother walks in.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she says. She puts her hand up to her forehead, and her Black Flag tattoo peeks out of the short-sleeved blouse she's wearing. “This is it, you know, this is really it. I mean, it's not like I'm having a good day already, and I walk into the
women's bathroom
—you do know you're in the women's bathroom?”

“Yes, I met a really nice girl in here who—”

“Humping the wall! Like you're a Jack Russell terrier or something! Honestly! I think you're making so much progress, and then I find you
here
doing
that
!”

Later my mom will cry and call me her sweet boy and tell me how much she loves me and how sorry she is to have lost her patience with me. I know this at the time because it's what always happens when she yells at me. She doesn't usually yell at me like this, but whenever she does, it's followed by a) tears, b) hugs, c) “sweet boy,” and d) apology. It's a predictable pattern, so I don't really mind it that much.

“Mother—” A few years ago, I started calling her Mother instead of Mom because of the John Lennon song “Mother,” which is a better song than the Genesis song “Mama.” I do not know of any songs called “Mom,” though there is “Stacy's Mom,” but that doesn't count. “I ran into this bathroom by mistake after spilling an energy drink while you were talking to Dr. Sloane, and I mopped it up with paper towels as best I could, but I thought I should use the hand dryer before I go outside with a wet crotch. See?”

“Do you have to call me
Mother
?” she asks. “You make me feel like I'm eighty years old.” Mother's age is a sensitive subject to her. She says she feels like a nineteen-year-old trapped in a forty-two-year-old's body. Once I told her that she's aging better than Debbie Harry or Exene Cervenka. This made her cry.

“But…”

“I know, Hank, I know. John Lennon.”

“Right!” I say, smiling. We've found some common ground at last.

“Do you get that the song is about his mother abandoning him? That's why he's screaming.” She opens a stall door.

“Yes, he and Yoko were involved in primal scream therapy with Dr.—”

“Hank. I'm just saying that…Oh never mind. Get the hell out of the ladies' room, will you? I have to pee.” She's now perched above the toilet, slowly closing the door.

“But my pants—”

“Go! You haven't been in the room while I'm peeing since you were three. Out.”

“Okay. I'll see you back in Chase's room.”

“Great.” She closes the door, and it makes a loud clack as she slams the lock into place.

I walk out of the women's bathroom. It crosses my mind to go into the men's room and try again with the hand dryer there, but given how Mother reacted to the whole scene, I figure it's best to just let it go.

Maybe this isn't the best idea, though. When I get back to Chase's room, the first thing he does is point at me and laugh. “Dude, you look like you blew a load!”

“Great. Thank you.”

“Hey, at least you tried something new, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It's good for you. I'm looking out for you. You gotta break out of your routine.”

“By drinking disgusting beverages and spilling them on myself?”

“It's not about the drink. It's about your attitude. You know? It's about not getting set in your ways like you're an old man or something.”

“I'm not set in my ways! Last week I bought a Buffalo Springfield album! Due to my dislike of Stephen Stills, I vowed I would never buy that band's work, but then I heard ‘Mr. Soul' and—”

Chase looks at the door, then whispers, “Nursing student. Play along.” When I walked in, Chase was sitting up straight in bed. He was not kissing his substantial biceps. He only does that in front of the mirror at home. But he was sitting up straight. Now he slumps down and runs a hand through his long blond hair, messing it up when it looked perfect before.

A young woman with long, honey-blond hair, too much makeup, and very large breasts comes into the room. “Hi, I'm Patti,” she says.

“With an ‘i' like Patti Smith with an ‘i',” or with a ‘y' like Patty Smyth with a ‘y'?” I say, curious. Chase glares at me.

Patty—or should I say Patti—raises her blue-shadowed eyelids, looks at me, says, “With an ‘i,'” and turns to Chase.

“So I'm studying nursing here, and I just need to take your vitals, if that's okay,” Patti says.

“All…right,” Chase croaks out.

“You had your knee scoped, is that right?” Patti asks.

“Yeah. Listen, you haven't heard anything about my prognosis, have you? It's just that I play lacrosse, and our team has a real shot at the NCAA title this year. But it's not the lax, you know, it's the scholarship. If I can't play, I can't pay, and then…I don't know. I guess I'll be pulling espresso shots instead of going to college. It's just…I feel like my whole future's on the line here, you know?”

Parts of what he says are true. He does go to college on a scholarship to play lacrosse. His team, however, has never in the history of the school been ranked higher than number twenty-seven nationally. And if he lost his scholarship, he could fall back on the substantial college savings Dad's parents put away. Of course I don't point any of this out. I do not contradict Chase when he talks to a girl any more than I try to run onto the field when he plays lacrosse; I know much more about music than he does, but there are certain areas where I defer to his expertise.

“Wow,” Patti says, pumping his blood pressure cuff, “you must be really worried.”

“Yeah.” Chase nods. “I guess I am.”

“Well, I'll tell you what. I'm gonna go ask around and see what I can find out, and I'll check back here and let you know what I hear, okay?”

“Thank you,” Chase says. “You're really kind. You're already a better nurse than anybody else I've seen here.”

Patti blushes, smiles, mouths the words “Thank you” at Chase, and leaves the room. As soon as he's sure she is gone, Chase turns to me and whispers, “Watch and learn, my boy! Watch and learn!”

I have the watching down, but I really don't feel like I've learned anything. Having a girl talk to me, smile at me like that, like me, want to kiss me—that seems as impossible as Johnny, Joey, and Dee Dee Ramone rising from the grave for a Ramones reunion tour. Impossible, but wouldn't it be cool if it actually happened?

Away from the hollow echoes
of the bathroom and back in the creepy quiet of the hospital corridor, I walk toward room 202. The linoleum floor is speckled white, with the odd dark blue and aqua tiles thrown in for some reason. Cheer, I suppose, even though, let's get real, people, it's a hospital, and the only reason you're here is because of bad things. Hospitals are like black holes—which sound like harmless pits a kid could dig with a shovel, but they're not; they're theoretical regions in space, but theoretical or not, their gravitational pull is so strong there's nothing—no human, Mack truck, tank, not even light itself—that can escape its clutches. Hospitals suck you in too, only you don't have the free-floating escape of space. You just have linoleum. With one foot on blue and the other on white, like some demented version of Twister. I wonder if there are scenarios that are happy in hospitals. Diseased foot? Nope. Tragic accident? No again. Stitches? Even minor injuries aren't reason to smile.

I get almost all the way to 202 before I remember the note. I leave it where it is and look toward the room. The door is open enough that I can see in a little. Not all the way but enough to see their feet. My dad's bony ones are hunked on top of the meshy white blanket; my mother's, clad in flats that are too confining for this time of year, are near the foot of the bed. God forbid she wears a sandal. Flip-flops would signal total anarchy. I cough, giving them fair warning that I'm coming in, just in case they're talking about anything significant, which I highly doubt.

The feet shift. I thumb my tattoo.

“Liana!” Dad's voice is overly enthusiastic, the kind of happy you get at an airport, not a hospital.

I scrape my feet along the floor and go into the room, and suddenly I find one reason you could be happy here. On the television, the one that's pinned to the corner of the ceiling at an improbably awkward angle, is the hospital network channel. Sometimes they show rehab info, like what it'll be like if you broke your hip and are going home. Other times they provide all this info on sodium and dietary restrictions if you have diabetes or something. For the past hours that we've been camped out here, I've seen a lot of this. But not what's playing now.

My mother opens her mouth to speak but is captivated by the shot on the screen: a newborn, wrapped in a blue-and-pink-trimmed blanket, a tiny white hat perched on its head. A baby, I think, realizing that I would sound stupid saying it. That's a reason to be happy at a hospital. Having a baby. “Bringing a newborn home is the happiest day of your life. But it's also a time of great change.” The voice is scratchy, coming out of the remote that's looped over my father's guardrail. I look at my parents and watch my father fumble with the remote to change the station or switch it off. I take a last glance at the impossibly small person on the screen. Giving birth would be the only good reason, a happy reason, to be at a hospital. Happy for most.

“I thought you were getting food?” My mother's tight bun has started to fray, giving her the appearance of having rubbed a balloon on her head. Static. “You know how you get if you wait too long. I should have brought something from home. The bran muffins from this morning.” She gives me a withered look, asking me wordlessly not to be another person demanding her care.

“I'm fine.” I shrug her off.

My dad motions for me to join him on the bed, and I perch on the edge, realizing to my annoyance that no, I didn't get anything to eat, and yes, I am nearing that semi-woozy stage where I feel half here and half somewhere else. Then again, I feel that not only when I'm hungry. I flash for a second to kissing Jett Alterman under the bleachers. If only it hadn't been during a heat wave, it would have been perfect. Or nearly perfect, except for the marching band's practice that made my head ring with cymbals, and the fact that Marissa Michaels and her wastoid crew kept giggling from under the neighboring set of bleachers. Was I semi there then, too? Jett turned out to be so much less than the emotionally in-tune lead singer he promised to be. Or at least that I thought he was. Turns out he didn't even want to sing. He'd just stumbled into it. And stumbled into me too. That's the thing about kisses: they're supposed to be magic, like the physics of two separate beings with their own splitting cells and genetic codes somehow finding each other and then, despite gravity's pull yanking them elsewhere, their mouths meet. But when it's just a coincidence—stumbling—how can that be it? That's just objects bumping, colliding in the universe for no good reason. The note in my pocket chafes at my thigh skin. I frown. Maybe it's not just hunger bothering me. But hunger makes it worse.

“She needs food,” my mother says to my dad, as though I'm an inanimate object. Or, an inanimate object if it actually consumed food.

“I'm due for a meal myself.” Dad tugs at his call button, summoning a nurse who will no doubt produce a smile and a tray of watery potatoes, floppy toast, and perhaps—if he's lucky—red Jell-O.

“Going for the ultra-spicy tonight, huh?” I raise my eyebrows and flip my hair out of my face. The room is so bright. It'll be a relief to leave here and settle into a routine at the science lab: the dim air, the dull sound of the air conditioner, it's easier than the stark reality of this place.

“Very funny. You know I can't wait to get out of here.” Dad's face shows his worry, though. He will talk about craving Mexican food or maybe curry, but the truth is that he's concerned.

“Any news?” I pick at the hem of my shirt. The boy in the bathroom knew Squeeze. Or at least he sounded like he did. Then again, guys do that sometimes—say they like what you like, or know what you know, just to get closer to you. I should know, because I do this too. Say if there's a guy I want to kiss and I haven't—I could study him, find out what he likes; it's so easy, really, to spew sports facts or make up some passion for theater even though I only like musicals, which I keep fairly hidden because, really, what's a science-oriented person like me, one whose main loves are space and kissing, doing liking musicals? Anyway, maybe Bathroom Boy does know Squeeze. Maybe he's moody enough to like Tom Waits, but fun-loving enough to charge into the wrong bathroom and like Squeeze. I crack up now, thinking about the whole bathroom scene. Talk about objects colliding in space.

“What?” My mother grins back, wanting to know, always to know, what I'm thinking and yet rarely telling me her thought bubbles. “What? What's so funny?” She looks hopeful that I'll spill, but I just shake my head.

“Just thinking something funny,” I tell her, and laugh.

“Redundant,” Dad announces. He's not being mean, just his usual grammar-devil self. He designed that computer program, the one everyone uses to make sure they're not spelling everything wrong, and even though his days are jammed more with flights and meetings now, he still nitpicks the words I use.

“You know what?” I pat my dad's leg as though it doesn't belong to him. And really, when you see someone in the hospital, in the sterile sheets and embarrassingly thin gown, it feels like that. Like everything is disconnected from everything else. “I'm starving.”

I stand up and head for the door—again. My mother checks her watch. “He said we'd hear back by now. Don't you think it's late? They should have the results by now.”

My dad pushes the call button again. Now he can ask for a meal tray
and
if he's going to live. Which of course we all know he is—because this is what always happens. To him.

“Want anything?” I ask them.

Mom considers for a minute. “Pretzels?” Leave it to her to pick the blandest thing the vending machine has to offer. “Unsalted.”

“Dad?” I stare at him. He's very tall, so seeing him lying down is strange. No matter how many times we wind up back here, there's a part of me that finds it disorienting, the way that scientists describe the re-entry to Earth after being in space. It's not the weightlessness that bothers them, it's coming back to gravity. I hold my own hands, thumbing my palm the way this guy Julian Nichols did when we made out backstage after his play last year. He was a big musical theater guy. His lips were a little dry, but not so dry that they were chapped. I imagined him going on to star on Broadway, maybe in London's West End, giving me a signal from the stage to show he was thinking of me, as though any high school kisses matter. He held my face when he kissed me, which I liked, even though I figured he'd practiced the move. It felt dramatic and he was heading to NYU for film school in the fall, so it made sense. So did the fact that he later hooked up with the girl who played Sarah Brown to his Sky Masterson in the production of
Guys and Dolls
. “Dad?”

Dad fiddles with his IV line. “This damn tape is making me itchy.” My mother tries to help him. “And no, no food for me. Better stick to the prescribed diet.”

It doesn't take a shrink to make a connection between my dad's major hypochondria and my rather ruthless love of kissing. Then again, my mother is kind of a shrink and she's never said anything. Then again, she doesn't know the extent of my potential slutdom because, as far as she's concerned, I've been kissed exactly twice—once when she saw a boy in seventh grade peck me on the cheek, which doesn't count, and once when she interrupted the basement kiss at my house. That counted. I was pressed up against the wall, staring into Jonah Jacobs's eyes, mesmerized by his mouth. We'd bonded over Bob Dylan, who we both loved, over calculus, at which he excelled, and Uranus, not my favorite planet, but funny in a totally juvenile way. “Hey, Uranus,” he'd called me, and I'd laughed because my last name is Planet. “It's pronounced
pluh-net
,” I'd said, and looked to the side like Joni Mitchell on the cover of
Blue
. I'm a master of looking like I'm somewhere else. He'd stared at me a while, and I'd thought, just for a few minutes, that we could wind up together. Like not basement together, but together—seamed.

“Here she comes.” My mother points to the doorway, where a fresh-faced nurse brings my dad's chart. She studies it and remains unfazed. This is probably because, even though I am not a doctor, I think there's not much to be fazed by in there. Around three times a year my dad has these freak-outs. Attacks, you might call them, although he doesn't. Once he was flying from Austin back home from some conference, and he got left-arm pain. Then chest pain. But it wasn't a coronary. Once he'd been home for only four hours, like a layover at our house between travels, and started dry heaving. With neck pain. But it wasn't meningitis as he feared. Each time, he comes here, gets admitted “for observation,” and winds up going home the next day. It's part annoying, part tedious, and just the smallest bit scary because I guess there's always that possibility of
what if
.

On Earth, we can see back in time until a point about 100,000 years after the big bang. But my parents can't see back even four months ago when Dad was right where he is now, clad in a gown and poked with an IV for no good reason except his own nerves. I touch the metal of the doorjamb as I brush past the nurse and head for vending-machine bliss. I can hear her relaying the blood-work results to my dad. I don't know what it all means, but he's taking the news well.

“Oh, great! Whoa.” He sighs as I exit. “So, no more tests? What about sed rate or specific gravity?” He knows all the terms now. His voice is at once relieved and sad. He enjoys not being poked and prodded, but maybe having the investigation. Having someone spend the time, I guess, looking into what is going on unseen in his cells, his plasma, his organs.

I mouth the words
specific gravity
. Good band name. I check my mother's face. She is furrowed on the brow but already starting to pack it in—looking around the room at what needs to be packed up, what needs to be dealt with at home.

My father will be back on his feet tonight, tomorrow morning, latest, and back to jetting all over the globe in no time. My mother will drive him to the airport, which she only ever does after one of these fits, and then we'll be back to normal until the next one, which—if past experience means anything, which of course it does—will be around the end of August.

I put my fingers on my mouth, feeling the puff of my lower lip, wondering if anyone I've ever kissed longs for me. Longs for me the way I long for another new kiss, something I don't yet know. Like I said, there's some connection between those medical tests my dad desires and my own lip frenzy, but I'm not a shrink and my mother's not really one either.

“I want candy,” I say, and then, remembering that those words also form lyrics, I sing them. My fingers rest on the vending-machine glass until I think of all the sad, sick people who have touched the same glass, and I shove my hands deep into my jeans. The paper in my right-hand pocket scratches at my palm, but I ignore it, wishing I'd worn shorts. I'll be too hot when I get outside, but I dressed for the science lab, where I will live all summer, and it's always freezing in there.