Her hand out, she touched him gently. 'Donald?'
He felt her leaden hand on him, knew how to make her go away.
'I'm fine,' he said, turning to look at her. 'I'm sleeping well lately,
Doctor.'
'Dreams?'
'No dreams that I remember. My journal is empty, I know.'
He waited, then said, because she wanted, 'I'm sorry.'
'There's nothing to apologize for. But it would be better if you wrote down your dreams. You
'Perhaps,' he said.
'Can you remember any of these dreams?'
He looked at her, thought,
'I don't remember.'
'Is that true, Donald?'
He looked at the wall again. 'I don't know.'
She sighed; always sighed.
'Have you ever felt it?' he said abruptly, loudly. He had startled her. 'Stardust has a
A cat.' His eyes became momentarily fierce.
She looked at him with heightened interest. In her eyes she was saying
'Bits of stars come to me. I summon them—Mizar, Alcor, Markab—and they send tiny parts of themselves to me. I want all of them to come, not just bits—'
He was suddenly silent. He looked away from her again, at the wall, her plaques and framed certificates. A part of him felt pulled to the night. 'Donald, what do you think this means?'
'I don't know' he said.
A minor breakthrough, Dr. Smith termed it. In the back of the car, the song went through Donald's head. In the front, his parents argued contentedly about dinner, were happy; his father glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure he was still there. They wanted him to be well.
'Donald,' his mother finally said, speaking as if he would break, 'would you like to dine out?'
He made no answer, but they wanted to so badly, he said nothing to stop them.
The restaurant was darkening when they arrived. Recessed lights blinked on as the sun lowered outside. Too bright. They were seated near a long window, his father knew the management.
Donald sat facing the lowering sun, trying to stare beyond it.
The menu lay open in front of him, so his mother ordered. The food came, and when his mother started his own hand moving to Donald's mouth with a fork, he continued the motion and repeated it himself. His father talked about sports, television shows, an architectural commission that might come.
Outside, the sun went down, as a sprinkle of stars lumined the bluing horizon.
The song rose in Donald's head:
He didn't hear the shouting around him. To him, it all went away. He was stretching his hands out, standing up as high as he could go, shouting for the stars to come to him. They bulged out of the darkening sky toward him, then pulled back and hung waiting. He wanted them to dance around his head; wanted to feel pieces of them brush against him like furred things. He shouted for them to come. A yearning joy filled him, but the stars stayed coyly planted, distant—
The lights of the restaurant were turned up bright, washing out the night sky. His mother's crying made him look down. He was standing on the table. Most of the dishes had been kicked aside, spilled. His father was holding Donald's pants leg tightly, trying to steady him.
The restaurant had gone quiet. Donald and his parents were surrounded by a frightened circle of waiters.
With his father's help, Donald stepped carefully down. His mother cried all the way to the car and then home. 'Why can't we have even a dinner together? Why can't I have even that? Seventeen years old, and he can't even let me have
He unhooked the intercom wires. His mother and father didn't come with the rattling key until late in the night, after hours of dancing and joyful shouting. He was exhausted. The stars, more of them, bigger bits, rushed back out into the deep sky all at once as the door opened, leaving him giddy, feeling as if he were in a sudden vacuum. His knuckles were bloody, there were marks on the ceiling where he had tried to push himself up and through. The window bars were marked with blood, and with scratches from the furniture he had broken.
His father came in, looked at the damage, and told his wife to be quiet.
'I won't be quiet! Why do you do this, Donald!' she shouted. 'You used to be a normal little boy, you played baseball and read books and watched television—you
She turned and ran off, sobbing.
Donald looked after her, and remembered, but she was not correct. He saw himself in his crib, staring out past the rotating mobile: little moons and planets turning over his head in nightlight, playing
He remembered playing baseball, the summer games at night, the lights glaring angrily down onto the field, the pitch coming to him, his father in the stands. But Sirius was rising on the eastern horizon in front of him, over the outfield, and he stood and dropped his bat and they called him out—
He remembered reading, the book about stars, the sun spilling through his window onto his desk. He learned their names. But already he was dreaming of the night to come, when he would kneel and hold his palms out, secretly wishing as the real stars spread their beautiful blanket overhead—
He remembered watching television, going to birthday parties, throwing a football in the backyard with his father, a thousand other things, but always the stars—the stars!—called to him, up through the earth during the bright day, out past the blue-skied sun in the darkness of space, their call deeper, richer, more insistent than the movement of his own blood.
And now, and now!—
