“Ursa Major,” I said, trying to get her to start. I could always pick that one out. Big Dipper. Except I couldn’t find it.
She cleared her throat, like she was scolding me, but it was just to tease.
“Cassiopeia.” She lifted her hand up, drew it out for me. Five stars zigzagging.
“Cepheus.” Four stars that made a triangle, plus a fifth that dropped down like a kite tail.
I couldn’t keep track, but after she finished, I was pretty sure that wasn’t all them.
“What about Orion? Which one’s Orion?”
She turned on her side, laid her hand on my belly, and slid it down to my belt buckle. I had to grit my teeth not to squirm. She had a way of making me feel ticklish.
“Right. Orion’s the one with the belt, with the three stars, but I don’t see it.”
“October.”
“Really? It’s not out ’til October? We’ll have to come back in October then.”
Then I saw a shooting star. I was trying to remember how that was supposed to go, to wish on it, when I saw another one and then another.
Thinking I must be imagining it, I said, “Did you see that falling star?” Right as I did another one flew across the sky.
“Perseid,” Wavy said.
“Persay-what?”
“Perseid meteor shower.” Another one shot past Cassiopeia like an arrow.
“Wow.”
She nodded against my arm and after that, we were quiet. We didn’t need to talk. We just laid there watching falling stars go streaking white through all that darkness.
PART TWO
1
KELLEN
December 1979
In high school in Oklahoma, there was this girl I liked, and one night after I went out drinking, I climbed up to her bedroom window. In bed, she let me kiss her and grope her a little, but then she told me to get lost. She really only liked my bike. Not me so much. Climbing up to her window, though, that was fun. What Old Man Cutcheon called “shenanigans.”
Climbing the trellis under Wavy’s window felt like shenanigans, but as soon as I knocked on the sash, I realized I was too drunk and being stupid. I shouldn’t have been riding, let alone climbing up to her window.
I woulda gone back down, but Wavy opened the window before I could. I guess she’d heard the bike coming up the road. I crawled over the sill and managed to scramble into her room without busting my ass. She closed the window and stood there like a ghost in her nightgown. Waiting for me to say something. Well, yeah, since I just crawled in her bedroom window in the middle of the night.
“I brought you a present,” I said.
“Not Christmas yet.”
“No, not Christmas. It’s a—a birthday present.”
“July.”
“I know your birthday’s in July. I just—I don’t—I’m a little drunk. It’s actually my birthday. I brought you a present for my birthday.”
“Today?”
“Yeah, today’s my birthday. Well, yesterday. I think it’s past midnight already.”
Her teeth flashed in the dark and she took hold of my hand, pulled me toward the bed. It was the only place for me to sit down, but that spooked me. Made me think about climbing through that other girl’s window to get in bed with her.
“No, sweetheart. I just came to bring you a present.”
I’d carried it tucked flat into the back of my waistband, but when I pulled it out, I dropped it on the floor. Before I could pick it up, she pulled me another step toward the bed.
“Cold,” she said.
“Yeah, you need to get back in bed. I let all the cold in opening the window.”
“You.”
I was cold. When Wavy held the covers open for me, I sat down on the edge of the bed. I shrugged outta my motorcycle jacket and kicked off my boots. Left my jeans, belt, and shirt on. Drunk as I was, that seemed okay. She was in her nightgown, but I was still dressed.
Getting under the covers was easy enough. I fluffed the quilts and tucked them around both of us, since my arms were long enough to arrange it all. She huddled up along my side, shivering, and rubbed her feet against my leg trying to warm up.
Once I got my arm around her and she laid her head on my shoulder, we were warm and comfortable, and ready to go to sleep. And that was the goddamn problem. This wasn’t the same as falling asleep next to Wavy in the meadow. I was in bed with her. If Val came upstairs and found me there, I couldn’t exactly say, “I was too comfortable to leave.”
“Wavy? I better go.”
She shook her head.
“I can’t stay here.”
She dug her chin into my arm. A nod?
“Seriously, sweetheart. I can’t.”
Her answer was so quiet, I wasn’t sure I heard it right. I didn’t want to be sure, except I needed to be sure. It felt like two dogs were playing tug-of-war with my heart. She wouldn’t say it again, and it turned out I wanted to know more than I didn’t want to know.
“You love me?” I said.
The sharp chin again. Twice. There weren’t many things she thought were worth nodding twice for.
“I love you, too. I love you.” I said it twice, to be sure she heard it. I shivered, not cold anymore but knowing that saying it out loud made it real. For a long time it was this sneaking feeling I didn’t look at too closely, but now I’d said it. I laid awake for a while, feeling her breath on my arm, but finally, being warm and comfortable and drunk caught up with me, and I fell asleep.
* * *
I woke up needing to piss, with my dick hard as a rock first thing in the morning, and there I was in Wavy’s bed, with her curled up next to me. When I went to get up, she held onto me.
“Present?” she mumbled.
“Yeah. Here, let me up. You think your mom’ll wake up if I go down to the bathroom?”
“Window.”
“Sure, I can leave the way I came.”
“I won’t look.”
Her eyes were squeezed shut against the sun coming up, but she turned her head away, too. It was the quickest fix, so I lifted up the window sash and undid my zipper. The cold took care of my hard-on right quick. Wavy giggled at the sound of piss splattering and freezing on the metal porch roof, but she kept her face hidden until I zipped up and closed the window.
“Present.” She must have been feeling brave. All that talking and the way she looked at me.
Her present was on the floor where I’d dropped it the night before. Seeing it in daylight, I was embarrassed it was something so cheap. I’d thought it was magical when I bought it and, when she took it from me, it still was. Her face lit up, so she was half angel and half little girl with sleep wrinkles on her face.
“They glow?” she said.
“Yeah, and you stick them up on your ceiling. So you can have stars even when it’s cloudy like last night. So you can see Orion all year round.”
“Wonderful.” She said it so soft it wasn’t even a whisper.
“I better go. I don’t think Val would be too happy about me being up here.”
Wavy shrugged. I pulled on my boots and jacket, before I opened the window again. Looking at the trellis, I couldn’t believe I’d climbed up it in the middle of the night. Stupid as hell.
So the boots had to come off again and I tiptoed down the stairs behind Wavy. In the kitchen, I tugged my boots on, while Wavy waited in her bare feet. When I reached for the knob on the kitchen door, she put her hand on my arm.
“Nothing for your birthday,” she said.
“Not nothing. You gave me the best present I’ve had in a long time.”
Since she didn’t step back from me, I took her face in both my hands, turned it up, so I could lean down and kiss her. On the mouth, but nothing dirty. The kind of kiss you give someone you love.
She smiled at me. A real smile, with teeth and dimples and the whole shebang.
2
AMY
After Thanksgiving, Mom started calling Aunt Val and saying
, “We want the kids to come for Christmas. If you’ll tell me how to find your house, I’ll come get them,” but Aunt Val wouldn’t. Mom finally gave up, but four days before Christmas, this little bald man showed up to drop them off. He didn’t even bother to take the cigarette out of his mouth to introduce himself to Mom. His name was Butch, and he was a “business associate” of Uncle Liam’s, he said. He told Mom that somebody else would come pick Wavy and Donal up, but he didn’t say who or when. Until then, they were all ours.
Dad made Wavy promise not to sneak out, but that didn’t keep her from doing other weird things. At the rehearsal for the church Christmas pageant, Donal got cast as a shepherd and the choir director cast Wavy as an angel.
“That’s probably not a good idea,” said Leslie, who had been passed over as the Virgin Mary every year and twice was stuck being the Innkeeper, the jerk who makes Jesus get born in a barn. Now that she was too old to be in the pageant, she helped the choir director corral angels. She didn’t want to corral Wavy.
“Why not?” the director said.
“She won’t talk. Or sing,” I said. In my last year in the pageant, I was the third wise man. That’s the problem with the Christmas story: most of the roles are for boys. The only girl is there because men can’t have babies.
“And she does things,” Leslie said, but the choir director wasn’t listening.
Wavy already wore a white dress, so for the rehearsal all she needed was a halo and a pair of wings. Even without those things, she looked like an angel.
The rehearsal went fine until we broke for our snack. When we returned to the sanctuary, the Baby Jesus was missing. Like in a crime drama, the only things left behind in the straw were his swaddling clothes.
The adults searched through piles of costumes and boxes of decorations. The church ladies accused each other.
“I put it in the manger. I always put it in the manger,” said one.
“Him!” another lady said. “Our Lord Jesus is not an it.”
The choir director accused the Virgin Mary, who cried, and then the Virgin Mary’s mother yelled at the choir director.
In the middle of the drama, Wavy leaned close to me and whispered, “Dust Bunny.”
“This isn’t just some baby doll,” I said. “This Baby Jesus has been in the church’s Christmas pageant every year for a long time.”
Wavy gave me the small, sneaky smile I knew so well.
She had Dust Bunnied the Baby Jesus.
“Let’s look under the pews,” I said to Leslie. So we crawled through the sanctuary, searching under the pews. The other kids started looking, too, and five minutes later, the head shepherd said, “I found it!”
I cornered Wavy on the steps to the choir loft and said, “Why did you do that?”
“Easter egg hunt.”
That’s what church was to Wavy: a set of games she didn’t quite understand. I laughed, Wavy laughed, and the choir director yelled, “Who’s giggling in the loft? And where’s my third wise man? Please, can we focus?”
* * *
In Sunday School, we were supposed to make Christmas cards to deliver to church members who were too sick to come to church. Wavy cut out the wise men and the livestock, colored them in shades of purple and green, and glued them all around the edge of her card. She left Mary and Joseph and Jesus in a pile of cut out paper on the table.
Inside her card, where we were supposed to write Bible verses, Wavy wrote, “Dear Kellen.”
I didn’t get to read what she wrote after that and neither did anyone else. When the teacher came around to look at our cards, Wavy wouldn’t let her.
“Why not, sweetie? Just let me see.”
The teacher took a step closer and Wavy ran. For the rest of Sunday School she hid, and for the pageant, too. So the choir director didn’t get her perfect blond angel to stand front and center and refuse to sing. After the pageant was over, as Mom was about to panic, Wavy walked out from behind the baptistery.
Back at home, Dad sat on the couch, reading his work papers, while Leslie, Donal, and I tore into our presents. Wavy had presents, too, but all she wanted for Christmas was an envelope and a stamp.
“Who’s the card for?” Mom said.
Once it was safely sealed in the envelope and addressed, Wavy passed it to her.
“Jesse Joe Kellen? This is the boy who calls you Wavy?”
“Is he your boyfriend?” Leslie was in eighth grade that year and had gone completely boy-crazy, and Dad’s mom was just as bad.
“What color are his eyes? Blue? Brown?” Gramma Jane said.
Wavy nodded and said, “Soft.”
“Soft brown eyes are very nice. Is he in your class at school?”
Wavy shook her head.
“Well, is he younger than you? Or older?” Gramma Jane said.
Older.
They went on asking questions about Kellen and, to my surprise, Wavy answered. He had a shy smile and Wavy got to ride on his bike.
“Mom, stop, you’re embarrassing her,” Dad said.
“She likes it,” Gramma Jane said. “Every girl likes to talk about the boy she likes. And he likes you, too, doesn’t he?”
“He loves me.” Wavy followed the confession with one of her rare dimpled smiles. Mom thought it was so cute that she told the story to her book club friends when they came over for New Year’s. Wasn’t it sweet how her tragic ten-year-old niece had a little boyfriend who loved her?
It was sweet until Mom met Kellen.
We were in the kitchen, getting ready to leave for our music lessons, and Mom was arguing with Donal about his Christmas toys.
“Donal, we’re going to come back to the house and get them, okay? You don’t have to take them all with you. Wavy, will you tell him?”
Wavy shrugged, maybe because in her experience, you didn’t always get to go back for your toys.
The doorbell rang and Mom sent me to answer it. On the front porch stood a huge man in jeans and a snap-front western shirt. He said, “Hey, I’m Kellen. I’m here to get Wavy and Donal.”
I left him in the entryway and ran back to the kitchen.
“Who was it?” Mom said.
“Kellen. He’s here to get them.”
Donal dropped his toys and ran out of the kitchen, shouting, “Kellen!”
Wavy went after him.
Still in our coats, we trundled into the front hall, where Kellen swooped Donal up so high he almost knocked his head on the ceiling. Wavy smiled, while Donal talked nonstop. Now that he was talking, that was all he did. “And the Jesus baby was missing. And we crawled crawled crawled around on the floor to find it. And I wore a towel on my head. I was a shepherd. They wore towels on their heads. And Wavy was an angel. She had a halo. And … “
“Who is he?” Mom whispered to me.
“He said his name was Kellen.”
“Is he Jesse Joe’s father?”
Mom opened her purse, rattling her keys to be sure her can of mace was there.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m Brenda Newling.”
Kellen set Donal down and came toward my mother with his hand out.
“Good to meet you. I’m Jesse Joe Kellen.”
I watched my mother’s face as reality crowded out the story she’d invented. She had imagined little Jesse Joe as the sort of shy young man a quiet, wounded girl like Wavy could befriend. In Mom’s fairy tale, they held hands and shared secrets, and would someday go away to college and have good lives, if properly encouraged by a supportive aunt.
Soft brown eyes and a shy smile, Wavy had said. His eyes were almost sleepy as he offered his hand to my mother, and a big gold cap studded the middle of his shy smile.
Behemoth was the word my mother used to describe him to her book club friends, and he was enormous. Bigger than the Incredible Hulk on TV. Even though he wasn’t green, Mom recoiled from the hand he offered. His shirtsleeves were cuffed back, revealing several tattoos, including one in a horseshoe shape. In the center of it was a
four-leaf clover and the words Lucky Motherfucker. This was Wavy’s “little boyfriend.”
My mother stepped back and bumped into Leslie. Kellen still had his hand out, offering to shake, but he withdrew it and rested it on Wavy’s shoulder. She didn’t shake him off, like she would have with anyone else.
“Well, this is really inconvenient,” Mom blurted. “No one called to say that they were leaving today. It’s unreasonable for Val to expect…”
Kellen wasn’t listening. He’d gone down on one knee so that he was eye-to-eye with Wavy. While he looked at her, the rest of us didn’t exist.
Wavy whispered something into his ear and he answered: “I got your letter. I missed you, too.” All of that was shocking enough, but then she kissed him on the cheek. Unheard of.
“Mom, I’m going to be late to my lesson,” Leslie said. Only she would be upset about that. I dreamed of reasons to keep me from my violin lessons.
My mother cleared her throat and said, “Mr. Kellen, we have an appointment to go to. Perhaps you could come back this evening to discuss this.”
“I guess Val forgot to call.” Kellen finally took his eyes off Wavy and got to his feet.
“I guess so. If you’ll excuse us, we need to leave. Come on, kids.”
“Why can’t I go with Kellen?” Donal said.
“Because I haven’t spoken to your mother yet.” My mother rattled her car keys. “Now, come on. Why don’t you girls walk Mr. Kellen out, while I get the car? Don’t forget to lock the front door.”
I was thrilled to stand in the entryway with Kellen. He had alarmed my mother and received a kiss from Wavy. As they parted on the front porch, Kellen reached out and ran his hand over Wavy’s hair, all down her back. She turned and smiled at him.
At the music school, while Leslie was having her lesson, Mom scooted her chair next to Wavy’s and whispered, “Who is that man?”
“Kellen.”
“Jesse Joe Kellen? The person you sent the Christmas card to?”
Wavy nodded.
“How old is he?”