to all the world that he was angry, young, and poor. He sported a lip ring and was as emaciated as Jeri. I had never shared a vehicle with a person like him. I imagined the expression that would cross my father’s face if he knew what was going on. Jeri twisted in her seat and threw open the back door. I thought I saw them exchange a brief look of complicity and wondered if she had planned this. Uneasiness flashed through me, along with images of my body dumped under an overpass with a slit throat, but the light had changed. People behind us were honking. My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. It was my father. The young man jumped in, and we were on our way.
THEY STARTED DRINKING BEFORE WE LEFT THE CITY LIMITS, seven and sevens with more whiskey than 7Up, though they drank them slowly, elegantly, the ice cubes clicking within the Styrofoam cups. Jeri passed a cup to me and I propped it up between my legs and took a sip once in a while. I got a buzz almost immediately. I hadn’t eaten all day.
We followed the freeway east. The strip mall lights grew intermittent, then were gone. We were passing long fields of something tallish, young corn maybe? There was no moon, and around us the land felt ancient and unaltered and secretive. We saw no other cars. Jeri said, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” and climbed into the back seat to keep Ripley company. That was the name the young man claimed. (“I’m Ripley- believe it or not.”) They crunched chips as they discussed people and places they hated in the city we had left behind. Jeri passed a bag of Cheetos to me, along with another filled Styrofoam cup, but the Cheetos were oily and made me want to throw up. Or maybe that was the Seagram’s to which I wasn’t accustomed. Later, there were carnal sounds. My eyes strayed to the rearview mirror, but it was too dark to see much except shapes lumped together and moving jerkily. The car wobbled over the median. Once, twice. I wondered how it would be if I let it go all the way to the other side, maybe even into the dark gash of ditch that ran alongside the road, if the shock of the tragedy would weld my parents back together. I stored the idea in my mind under
We climbed out shakily to use the facilities. I insisted on gender separation: boys in the right-side field, girls to the left. Jeri and Ripley humored me. The crop wasn’t corn-another mistake on my part. It came up to our armpits and had seeds, like wheat or wild grass. Ripley passed his hands over the stalks and announced it to be barley, but he was an unreliable narrator.
Later we sat on the hood of the car and Ripley rolled us joints. I had tried marijuana at parties before, but only a puff or two, and never in combination with alcohol. I took long drags, which made me cough. Jeri showed me how to hold the smoke inside my lungs for maximum effect. After a while, we lay back against the windshield and looked up at the sky. The stars were exceedingly bright. In a few minutes, they began pulsating. I put my hand over my breast. It was pulsating in the same rhythm. Someone else’s hand was on my breast, too. I didn’t push it away. I closed my eyes. Inside my eyelids colors were swirling, my very own living kaleidoscope.
Suddenly Jeri shouted, “Holy shit! Would you look at that!”
My eyes startled open, and the sky was full of the same swirling colors I’d seen within my eyelids. Swatches of red mostly, but also greens and yellows. I forgot to breathe. Curtains of misty light swept across the horizon, punctuated by bursts of brightness. It was like something out of
Ripley was trying to say something, but his tongue didn’t seem to be cooperating. Finally, his vocabulary muted by reverence, he burst out with, “It’s an effing aurora borealis.” It seemed sublimely plausible. There are more things in heaven and earth than are writ of in our geographies. We watched the aurora. Maybe for minutes, maybe for hours. Eventually, the spectacle turned my companions amorous and they made for the backseat. They invited me to join them. When I declined, Jeri narrowed her eyes at me, trying to gauge whether I was insulting them and whether they should do something about it. But Ripley said, “Whatever,” and slammed the car door shut.
The aurora gave a little shiver, then continued displaying its splendors. I walked into the field. The stalks of bearded barley were hard against my back. The hairy ends tickled my cheek. I rolled around, flattening stalks as I went until I had cleared enough space to see the aurora clearly. All around me was a musty, muddy odor, moles or raccoons or something more secretive. I had never before lain down on the bare ground at night. I pressed my palms against it. How foolish humans were to travel the world in search of history. Under my shoulder blades and over my head were the oldest histories of all: earth and sky. Strands of light-not the reds and greens I had thought earlier, but hues I had no name for-enacted their mystery. Soon, I fell into the deepest sleep.
WHEN I AWOKE, THE AURORA WAS GONE, LEAVING A TRACE OF redness in the sky, like embers in a fireplace after a party. My clothes were wet with dew. My head was clear. I returned to the car and, scooping up chilled water from the ice chest, washed my face. Jeri and Ripley were asleep in the backseat, limbs askew, mouths open. I’d been afraid of them earlier because they knew so many things about living that I didn’t-but I wasn’t scared anymore. Something had happened as I lay in the field, watching the sky, an understanding that I couldn’t control the lives of others-but neither could they control mine.
I swung the car in a wide U-turn and started driving back to the city. My CDs were in the back, so I turned on the radio, low, to keep myself awake. After a while, the news came on. There had been a major explosion in one of the chemical factories to the east of the city. Twenty fire engines had been dispatched to tackle the blaze. The situation was now under control, although residents close to the factory had been advised to keep doors and windows closed and to drink bottled water until informed otherwise.
This explanation of my aurora was disappointing, but no matter what its source, the dance of lights over the night field had given me something facts couldn’t take away.
I was almost at the city limits by the time Jeri and Ripley woke up. There was much loud-voiced remonstrance and banging of fists and questioning of my sanity and spewing forth of profane threats. I bore these with equanimity. I was in the driver’s seat, after all. I took the exit where we had picked up Ripley, stopped at a gas station, and asked them to get out. Something must have changed in my demeanor, because they did so without further ado. In all the turmoil, no one brought up the aurora.
I drove back to the dorm, took a shower, ate some dry cereal, and got to my classes on time. I hadn’t missed much; it wouldn’t be difficult to make up the work. Friends looked at the circles under my eyes and surmised I’d had the flu; I didn’t deny it. I gathered up the money-I hadn’t spent even a dollar-and returned it to the bank.
Later I listened to the messages that had piled up on my cell phone. There were twenty-two-eighteen of them from my father, increasingly frantic as he tried to figure out if something had happened to me. I thought of how he had almost ruined my life. Then I thought, no. I was the one who had headed for the brink; I was the one who had pulled back from it.
When he called that night, I picked up the phone. When he asked where the hell I’d been, I responded with a cool silence that lobbed the question back at him. He must have sensed that same difference in me that had made Jeri and Ripley leave quietly.
“What I told you about, a few days ago,” he said. “All I can say is, I don’t know what came over me.”
He wanted me to express thankfulness, but I would not oblige him.
“Maybe I’d caught a bug or something,” he said.
I didn’t reply.
“What I mean is”-he spoke too fast, the words tripping over one another-“I’m no longer planning to ask your mom for a divorce. In fact, I want you to forget all about that conversation we had.” He must have realized the absurdity of this request, because he amended it. “I’d appreciate it if you don’t bring this up with your mother.” There was a pleading tone in his voice.
I agreed. Reassured, he asked his regular questions about my health, coursework, and financial stability, and I offered my usual monosyllabic answers. The status quo thus restored, he hung up with relief.
But things were not the same. The relationship between my parents and me had shifted. I was driving, seeing them in my rearview mirror: smaller, shrunken; my mother trustingly oblivious of the fragility of the relationship on which she had based her life; my father without the courage to follow through on what he had-selfishly, illicitly, but truly-desired. Later I would forgive, but for now, I pulled away from them. Perhaps this distancing would have happened anyway, in time. But I felt rushed into it, as though I had yanked off a scab before the wound was healed, leaving behind a throbbing pink spot, the slow blood oozing again. And when I entered relationships of my own, I was careful to withhold the deep core of my being, the place in my mother that would have shattered if she
