As the days went by and Bernie didn’t come home, didn’t call, her life took on a sort of pattern. In the morning she would get wood from the woodpile outside the kitchen door and make a fire in the big iron stove, bringing in enough extra wood so Grandma could keep warm all day while she was gone. Then she’d make breakfast for herself and Grandma, usually just cereal. At school, the whispers about Wayne had died down, and she was mostly ignored, which was fine with her. Just fine. She had learned to do her homework in the afternoon, in case it was clear that night. She didn’t want homework hanging over her head. The days were getting short, so she usually had supper fixed by five o’clock, knowing that Grandma would go to bed soon afterward.
She hoped it would be warm at night, as the star man had told her not to come out if it was below freezing. “I’m having a little trouble getting over this cough,” he said.
“You ought to wear a hat,” she said, “and quit smoking.”
He laughed. “Keep at it, Angel. You may reform me yet.”
So when it was cloudy or freezing, she spent her evenings studying her star book and trying to memorize the names of all the bright stars and the constellations. In the section on autumn stars there were two north views of the sky and two south views. On the left, there was a picture that looked like the actual sky looking north or south. On the right, the constellations were connected like those connect-the-dots books. It helped a lot to have the connect-the-dots pictures. You had to admit that the real sky looked like God or whoever had picked up a bucketful of different-sized jewels and just flung them out against the dark.
Of course, the stars didn’t know their names. They didn’t even know they belonged together in a picture of a bear or a horse or a woman chained to a rock, waiting for a whale to swallow her up. That was all in people’s imaginations. People had turned the stars into pictures and stories to make them seem more manageable. Otherwise, all the immenseness would just sweep a person away like a giant wave. What is man? Even when people hadn’t known about galaxies millions of light-years away, hadn’t even known about light-years, the stars had been awesome.
When they had library period at school, the reading teacher usually took her to shelves with the easy books. She wasn’t sure why. She could read well enough, but one morning just before Halloween they had a sub, who let Mrs. Coates, the librarian, take charge. There was no way Angel was going to choose those silly little stories for herself, but she didn’t know how to find what she wanted, so for a minute she just stood in the middle of the floor.
“Can I help you find something, Angel?” It was Mrs. Coates. “What kind of book are you interested in?”
“I—I like books about stars,” Angel blurted out.
“Oh. Then I have the perfect book for you,” Mrs. Coates said and started over to the picture-book section. Angel hesitated. At least Ms. Bridgeman, the language-arts teacher, didn’t try to make her read picture books. Mrs. Coates bent over, picked a book off the shelf, and stood up. Angel had yet to move, so Mrs. Coates called over to her, “Angel, trust me, you’re going to love this book.”
The title of the book was Starry Messenger, and it was written and illustrated by someone named Peter Sis. Ever since she’d fallen in love with H. A. Rey, she had paid more attention to authors. On the cover of Mr. Sis’s book was a man looking through what had to be an old-timey telescope. He was on the porch or balcony of a tower. Painted on the tower were animals, which she soon realized represented the constellations. She opened the book to see a star-splattered night over a deep-blue cityscape. Only one light shone in the sleeping city. It was a window in a tower. In the window was the man with his telescope pointed at the sky.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Angel breathed the word. “Can I take it out?”
“Of course.”
Angel didn’t go to the checkout desk. She plunked herself down in the nearest chair, never closing the book.
The man in the tower was named Galileo Galilei. It was as if she’d been named Morgana Morgan or Angel Angelina. It was a little bit silly, but the man himself was not silly at all. He was a “famous scientist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, physicist.” Whew. A man who knew everything but who thought he had to prove how he knew it to other people, and he did it by making the first telescope to be aimed at the stars. He wanted to prove that the sun was the center of the universe—not the earth, as most people believed.
This made the authorities so angry that they put him on trial and then locked him up in his house with someone guarding him. It was exactly like putting him in jail for the rest of his life. Finally, they had to admit he was right, but Galileo Galilei had been dead for 350 years when they said so. They gave him a pardon. That was the crazy part. They forgave him for their own mistake. It didn’t make sense.
Yes, it did, in a funny kind of way. Wasn’t she always wanting Verna to forgive her? Didn’t Verna have some apologizing to do herself? Not to mention Wayne. Why should she feel like apologizing to Wayne, especially if he really had robbed that convenience store and shot that clerk like they said? Maybe kids cost so much money... No.
It was not her fault that Wayne had robbed that store. She hadn’t asked for anything. If Verna had tried to make him feel he had to have more money, well, that was Verna’s fault, not hers. Wasn’t it?
“Angel! Stop daydreaming! It’s time to go back to class.” Megan Armstrong was standing over her, trying to see what book she was lost in. Angel tried to put her arm over the book to hide it. “It’s a picture book! You’re not checking out a picture book, are you?” She made sure all her friends could hear her.
“I’ve already checked it out for you, Angel,” Mrs. Coates called from the desk. “If you need any other books on astronomy, just let me know, all right?”
“Astronomy?” Angel could tell Megan was impressed.
“Thank you, Mrs. Coates,” Angel said, ignoring Megan’s open mouth. “If you have another one on Galileo Galilei, would you save it for me?” She moved past Megan into the line that was forming at the door. She could hear Megan and the others buzzing behind her, but this time she wasn’t embarrassed. She knew they were trying to figure out how someone like Angel knew about astronomy and Galileo Galilei.
The star man would love this book, but how could she show it to him in the dark? Even if she borrowed Grandma’s huge flashlight, the beam was hardly enough to make out the details in the pictures, much less read the print and the funny way the artist had written other stuff around the pages in script. Starry Messenger was gorgeous, almost as wonderful as the sky itself. It made H. A. Rey’s Know the Stars look poor and homely. Still, the two books had one thing in common: she never wanted to have to return either of them to the library.
She hid the book inside her notebook and read it the rest of the day. By the time she got off the bus, she had read the story at least twice and had read nearly everything that was written in script in the illustrations as well. It was almost as exciting as seeing Andromeda. She wondered if Galileo had been able to see that through his homemade telescope.
Out of habit, she checked the mailbox. It was empty except for a flyer urging Occupant to go to a sale at the Wal-Mart in Berlin. Fat chance! She balled up the flyer in her hand. She wondered if they’d had advertisements in Galileo’s time. She knew they had had a printing press, because Galileo’s own book had been published. But they sure as heck didn’t have Wal-Mart flyers! She giggled.
She caught herself dancing up the driveway and made herself slow down. If she was too happy when she walked through the door, Grandma was likely to ask how come. Then she’d either have to lie, which got complicated, or show her the book, which would take an explanation, an explanation that would have to include not only Miss Liza but the star man. She’d never mentioned the star man to Grandma. And the longer she waited the harder it got. What would Grandma say if Angel told her about him. If Grandma thought at all, she would probably wonder what a little girl was doin
g out with a grown man after dark. “Looking at the stars.” Even though that was the honest and total truth, it didn’t sound believable somehow.
Grandma was sitting in her chair in the near dark. Angel flipped on the switch by the door. “I’m back, Grandma.”
Grandma blinked in response to the sudden light. “Well, I ain’t blind or deaf yet. And no, the drat phone ain’t rang all day.”
She’d better tone down her mood to match Grandma’s.
“Can I make you some tea, Grandma?”
“I hate tea.”
“No, you—” Angel stopped midprotest. “Okay.”
“I’m bored,” Grandma said. “Ain’t nothing to do around here.”
“Well, I could read to you.”
“You already read them books. Ain’t you got nothing new to read?”
“I could run down to the library.”
“No!” Grandma sat up straight. “You’d just go off blabbing about all our troubles to Liza Irwin. I don’t like that smarty-pants butting her nose into my family business. You ought to know that by now, girly!” She slumped against the back of the rocker. “Didn’t you bring something new home from school?”
How could she know? “I don’t think you’d like it.”
Grandma closed her eyes. “I guess I could be the judge of that,” she said.
She slung her backpack off her shoulder and onto the table and took out Starry Messenger. Grandma had her eyes shut and was gently rocking back and forth, so maybe Angel could just skip the pictures and the script—just read the words in print. “For hundreds of years, most people thought the earth was the center of the universe, and the sun and the moon and all the planets revolved around it....”
“That ain’t true. People don’t think no such thing.”
“No, Grandma, that’s what the book—”
“I’m telling you, people don’t give a flip about the rest of the world, much less the blinking universe. They just care about themselves. I been sitting here all these days trying to figure out that mother of yours. That’s exactly her problem. She thinks she’s the center of the universe, and you and me and Bernie and even poor old Wayne is just something to whirl around her every want and wish. Well, I tell you, she is wrong, one hundred and forty percent wrong.”
“Yes, Grandma.” While the old woman ranted on, Angel slipped the precious book back into her pack and set about making tea.
***
It was a wonderfully warm night for late October, and the sky was as bejeweled as the pictures inside the cover of Starry Messenger. She decided to take the book outside and try to show the star man the pictures by Grandma’s flashlight. He’d probably want to take it home to look at better, but she’d just explain that it was a school library book and you weren’t allowed to lend it to anybody else. He’d understand that. Even if he didn’t seem to worry about rules, she was sure he’d think that the school had plenty of them for kids to follow.
When there were no more sounds from the kitchen, Angel went downstairs. She was wearing her winter jacket. It wasn’t really cold, but by ten or so she’d be glad she had it. She got the big flashlight from the drawer in the cabinet nearest the door and tiptoed out, pulling the door gently behind her. Tonight of all nights she didn’t want Grandma hearing her sneak out.
He wasn’t there. It was a perfect night, balmy as summertime, and he wasn’t there. All that worry about if or how to share her library book and he wasn’t even out there where he was supposed to be, where he always was when the night was clear and warm. She went on out to the field, looking right and left, sweeping the flashlight in great swaths across weedy land. He was nowhere to be seen. She headed toward the trailer. Maybe he was just late tonight. But when she got closer, she could see that there were no lights on in the trailer, and his old car was missing.
Why had he gone away? Was it because he somehow knew she didn’t want to share Starry Messenger with him? No, that didn’t make good sense. She must have done something to hurt his feelings or make him not want to be with her anymore. That was it. She racked her brain for what she might have said the last time they were together. She’d nagged him about his smoking. No. That wasn’t it. Face it. It was because she was too dumb. She couldn’t see all the things he wanted her to see and so he’d lost patience with her. He didn’t want to be bothered with someone so slow that it took her a couple of weeks to be sure where Polaris was—the one star that hardly moved, and—
No! She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. She was not stupid. She had to stop telling herself stuff like that. It was him. He was letting her down. Just like Galileo Galilei 191 everyone else. That’s what grownups did. They got kids to trust them, and then they just let go—blam. They didn’t know what it felt like to be dropped like that, or they didn’t care. To the kid being dropped, it hurt just the same whether the grownup was being mean or careless. It felt the same to the kid. And it wasn’t the kid’s fault, either! It wasn’t. The first time a social worker had told her that, it had just melted on her ears like snow. But now she knew it was true. At least in her head she knew it was a fact. All the things that had happened to her and Bernie hadn’t been their fault. She was sick and tired of thinking it was her fault when they got left at cold apartments and all-night diners and grandmas and, and—She turned and, stumbling over the uneven ground, ran back toward the safety of the house, clutching Galileo Galilei under one arm and trying to follow the bouncing light of the flashlight through a mist of tears.
She was never going to trust anyone again. Not even Mrs. Coates. Not even Miss Liza. Not even—She could hardly breathe. Her toe caught on the doorsill, and she fell, the flashlight bouncing and rolling, rattling across the kitchen floor until it came to a noisy stop against a chair leg.
“What’s that!” Grandma’s voice cried out from the bedroom.
“Just me,” Angel said.
“My gawd, girl! You trying to scare the liver out of me?”
“I’m sorry. I tripped.” Angel got up. She felt bruised all over. Even her heart felt sore. “Just go back to sleep, Grandma. It’s okay.” She closed the door as quietly as she could and slid the flashlight into the drawer. When she turned around, Grandma was standing in the doorway.
“Turn on the light, girl. No wonder you nearly broke your neck. Wandering about the kitchen in the dark. I thought you had some brains in that head.”
“I’m sorry, Grandma.”
“Just turn on the light, silly.”
Angel switched on the light by the door.
“You thinking of running out on me?”
“No.”
“Then why are you standing by the kitchen door wearing your winter coat?”
“Oh, that.”
“Yeah, that.” Grandma’s gray hair was out of its daytime bun and was streaming down her shoulders, making her look like a witch in a bad movie.
“I—I couldn’t sleep. I just thought—”
“You lying to me?”
“Why should I lie to you?” Angel could hear the lie in her own voice, but maybe Grandma would be fooled.
“I don’t know,” said Grandma, shaking her head. “It happens.” She went toward the rocker, moving as though she were a hundred years old instead of eighty. She eased herself down and then looked up at Angel, still standing by the door, the lie pasted all over her face.
“Make us some tea, won’t you, angel girl?”
“Sure.”
“And take off that dratted jacket. It scares me.” Her voice was almost a whimper.
They sat there, drinking the scalding tea, not speaking, Angel sinking into shame. It was just like the times she had let Bernie down, making him scared that she, too, would desert him, when she never would have. He had to know that. Even now. He wouldn’t think that she had wanted to be left behind, would he? Had Verna told him that Angel was tired of looking after him and that was why...
The tiredness of the last few days had seeped into her bones. She felt almost too hea
vy to climb the stairs and go to bed, but what else was there to do? Wayne left, then Verna, then Bernie, and now the star man—all gone without a word.
“I’m going to bed now, Grandma,” she said.
“Yeah,” the old woman said, but she didn’t make a move out of her chair.
EIGHTEEN
Falling Stars
The next afternoon when she got off the bus, she felt the man’s presence before she saw him. He seemed taller than he did in jail, as he stepped out of the trees beside the road.
“Angel?”
“Daddy?” She squinted her eyes at him, hardly believing what she saw. He was supposed to be in jail, not here. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m sort of like on parole,” he said, blinking his eyes and cocking his head like Bernie did when he was set to defy her. “You sounded upset on the telephone, so I thought I better come.”
“Parole?”
“Yeah.” He gave a smirk. “For good behavior.” She stood unmoving in the road, not knowing what to say or think. Was he lying to her?
“Ain’t you going to give your daddy a hug?” he asked, coming toward her. She wanted to run, but how could she run from him, her own daddy? She put her arms loosely around his shirt, which smelled like sweat and tobacco. He seemed not to notice how quickly she stepped back. “I’ll tell Grandma you’re here,” she said, turning away from him.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetheart. She don’t like me much. I got a friend going to pick me up later. Maybe I’ll just stay in the trailer till he gets here.”