The Guardian

Kuiper Baily was the son of a hippie and an opportunist. He was born on a Wednesday in a halfway house, and his mother said he spent his first year of life between here and the grave. After living in a sordid city apartment, they acquired a house so far from the urban din that he would screech despairingly into the dark silence of the walls when night lowered over the mountains. Only the crickets outside his window could console him, take the place of his traffic lullaby. Kuiper learned the geography of the house from the ground up, pulling himself up on dusty furniture, wobbling over uneven floorboards. He found a crawlspace in the cupboard where he hid for hours one afternoon, sitting still and quiet while his mother searched and pleaded for him to show himself. There were no stairs, just a stoop leading to the front door that he liked to jump off. The bones of the house were ugly. Its exposed wooden face looked out into the woods with an expression that conveyed its tiring age.

His mother, Anita Baily, got a job at the post office in town on his first day of school. He did not know how they got money for food or if they paid bills for the house before this time—she was always there; making curtains for the kitchen, playing hide and seek with him, painting stars on the ceiling of his bedroom and flowers on the wall over her reading chair. The school where his mother dropped him off was really a church. Or maybe it was a church that was really a school. It had a large courtyard and a cluster of picnic tables under a tree that split the two buildings down the middle. Anita left the boy inside the gate with a teacher that assured her he would be fine by the day’s end. Kuiper didn’t cry or wave when his mother walked down the path back to the center of town to where the post office sat behind the Dunkin’ Donuts. He colored pictures of apple trees with the other children, listened to a book, and waited in line for his mother to pick him up. *** With the seasons, the house changed. One summer his mother painted their house yellow; even the dense trees surrounding it couldn’t conceal the happy blight upon nature’s palette, its rays peeking through the branches from a mile down the mountain. In spring, soon after he had started second grade, Anita planted a garden behind the house. A few winters later snow caused the roof to leak and a new one was needed to replace it. The house looked younger as the years passed, as the life inside it developed to illuminate it’s outside.

Kuiper was ten when his mother told him that his father was a scientist. She was cutting bell peppers from her garden over the sink in the kitchen when she said, you know, your father would have enjoyed all this space. She told the boy that he was an inventor. An explorer of new ideas, she said.

What kind of ideas? he asked. The kind that change people’s worlds. She stopped chopping the peppers and wiped her hands on her jeans. I’ll show you something.

He padded in socked feet behind his mother as she went to the nightstand beside her reading chair, pulled out the drawer and sifted through a clutter of papers. She pulled out a stack of eight-by-eleven photos covered

15 Short Story

16 Short Story in plastic sleeve protectors and placed them in his hands. Names were scrawled in a foreign hand at the bottom of the sleeve in waxy pencil: Orion, Cancer, Scorpius, Cassiopeia. Pictures of the constellations, distinct against a midnight curtain.

It was a hobby for him, his mother said. A higher inspiration. Kuiper sat in his mother’s reading chair and flipped through the pictures. He had captured the moon and a meteor shower. Of course there were other worlds like those in his comic books, but this dark and fantastical world his father had glimpsed was alien to him. In his lifetime he had only lived in two worlds, and remembered very little of the first. The sound of cars outside their apartment is the one thing he is certain he remembers for himself and not from a memory his mother had relayed. Their home now was so different from that distant memory, a kind of peaceful haven from the city life he saw on television.

All Anita knew about Kuiper’s father was in that folder. The pictures. A thin pile of useless paperwork—a partially completed application for a car lease, sketches and scribbled math equations—was the only reminder of him. The folder had slipped out of his briefcase and she found it under the bed in the morning after he had left. She carried it with her, as though they were the pieces to a puzzle she might one day put together.

Your father was a story, she stroked Kuiper’s pinewood brown hair as he poured over the photographs. *** Kuiper never brought friends home from school. On his birthday each year, his mother took him down to Patty’s Parlor for ice cream and they hiked up the mountain for a camp out. The year he turned eleven, after his mother showed him the pictures, which he hung up in his room, he read books about stars, learned about the atmospheres of the planets, memorized the greater known constellations, and borrowed a telescope from school to go stargazing. On a warm day in October, Kuiper ran home from school, taking the shortcut through the trees. The white hatchback was not out front, so he let himself in and paced along the rough wood floors barefoot, listening to the clock above the kitchen sink tick. His mind was on the stars. All he could think about was what his teacher had said in science class that day and he had been holding in his excitement since second period. He heard the crunch of tires rolling over pine needles and scurried to the window. His mother was carrying groceries, balancing the paper sacks on her hip as she fiddled with the key. Kuiper pulled the door open and stepped aside so she could get to the kitchen.

Mom, can we go camping this weekend? He clutched the back of a kitchen chair as his mother placed a bottle of milk in the fridge.

Your birthday isn’t for two weeks. Can we go early? Mr. Schneller says there’s going to be a meteor shower on Saturday night.

His mother pulled her long blonde hair away from her neck, wrestled a band around it and let it flop back down her spine. I guess we could go this weekend. Do you have any homework due on Monday? *** They set out early Saturday morning, before the crickets had stopped their chirping. His mother carried the tent on her pack, Kuiper carried the camera she gave him last night as an early birthday present. They hiked up the mountain until their feet hurt, they leaned against trees to rest. It was nearly nine o’clock. He ate a packet of gummy worms he had packed while his mother wandered off the sparse path into a bramble of leadwort. He watched and chewed and did not speak as she coaxed the blue blossoms from the cold ground and wound them through her hair. She returned to the path and tucked a flower behind his ear. Ready?

Another hour and they had reached the clearing. It was a small spot at a peak that overlooked the neighboring mountain, a stream far below. From here, they could see the sky, a cold bright blue, unobstructed by trees. Kuiper helped his mother set up the tent, then spread out the picnic blanket she had brought. They ate sandwiches, drank Gatorade, and spotted shapes in the clouds. He enjoyed the silence, the scent of pine. The sun warmed his hands, his face, and he pulled off his baseball cap. His mother had fallen asleep on her back, head resting in the crook of her arm. Kuiper rolled off the blanket and stood, looked down the slope to the river.

Where are you going? His mother’s sleepy voice. He hung onto the tree beside him, putting his arm around it. I’m just looking.

She was quiet again and he resumed his watch. Breathing in, straining to hear the water below, breathing out. Listening, breathing, listening. And then footsteps. He turned around

when he heard them, distant, no one to be seen. A blue jay flew from a branch without a sound. Kuiper waited and listened, remaining by the tree. And then his mother was awake again, as the sound of the feet grew louder. Anita sat up, brushed off her shoulder the flowers that had fallen from her hair. There’s someone coming up here?

Kuiper shrugged and went to stand on the edge of the blanket.

They listened together to the plodding of boots and the swish of leaves. His mother gathered up the sandwich bags and stuffed them in her pack.

And then he was there, walking up the path with a backpack on, a walking stick in his hand. He spotted them, stopped like a deer caught in a hunter’s sights. The man was older than his mother, tanned wrinkles around his eyes and throat, gray stubble on his chin and cheeks.

Anita stood and put her hands on her son’s shoulders. I guess this isn’t just my camping spot; the man tossed aside his stick, stepped forward. Mind if I rest here?

Kuiper’s mother offered him Gatorade. I’m sorry we took your spot. We usually come here a few weeks later.

But there’s a meteor shower tonight, Kuiper broke in— interrupting his mother—a thing he rarely did.

The man looked at him, glanced down to meet the boy’s eye. Meteors, huh?

Elbows touching, the man and the woman and the boy lied on their backs on a blanket, staring up at the darkening sky. Kuiper pointed out Orion, Cassiopeia, Gemini, the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. The night was clear—the stars like bright ripples in a reflection pool.

The Draconid meteor shower is named after Draco the Dragon, Kuiper pointed at the Draco constellation. It’s in the Ursa Major family and Mr. Schneller says that it was discovered by Ptolemy who was a Greek astronomer. Do you know the story about Draco the Dragon? The man asked, looking over the boy’s head to that of his mother. Anita smiled. No, Kuiper said. There is a Greek myth that tells the story of Draco. In this myth, Draco represents Ladon, the dragon that guarded the golden apples in the garden of Hesperides. The golden apples were a gift to Hera from Zeus on their wedding day. She planted these trees in the garden on Mount Atlas and asked the daughters of the mountain to watch over it. But Hera didn’t trust the daughters not to steal the golden apples, so she placed Ladon at the head of the garden to guard them from theft or harm. One day, Hercules was asked to steal the golden apples from the garden, so he killed Ladon with a poisoned arrow to gain access to the trees. They say that Hera was so saddened by the dragon’s death that she placed his image in the sky. Do the other constellations have stories too? The man folded his hands across his stomach and looked to a cluster of stars in the east: The names of the constellations are Greek. They match up with a story about a god or goddess or mythological creature like Ladon.

Kuiper was quiet. He stared into the sky, thinking about two of his favorite things—stars and superheroes—and how they just collided in a nebulous realm of possibility. He began to plan the hours he would spend reading these stories and felt a shiver of pleasure wiggle up his spine.

Look, look! his mother grabbed his arm and pointed to where tiny streams of light were beginning to smudge the sky with satellite blue. Like sequins and smoke the meteors trailed through the heavens. Kuiper scrambled for his camera, tugged it out of his pocket and pointed it up into the night. He closed one eye and pressed it to his other. Tip; snap. Tip; snap. He exhausted the roll and sat back as the sparks began to fade.

*** The man’s name was Garth and he showed up at the house some weekday afternoons to give Kuiper a book or drink lemonade or cider in the kitchen with Anita. He had been coming since the camping trip, since he had given Kuiper an insatiable desire to learn about how the Greeks and astronomy intertwined. A week after they parted ways on the mountain, Garth showed up at their door with a Greek mythology book—a birthday present. Stories of the heroic Olympians filled the house; at mealtimes he would tell his mother the creation myth or the myth of Apollo and how he pulled the sun across the sky with his chariot. The peaceful silence that had enveloped their home was broken by stories of stars and gods.

His mother didn’t mind. She listened with focused intent to his stories. Instead of putting the groceries away with a sigh when she got home from work, she stowed them in the fridge and tided up the kitchen for Garth’s visit. The times he came by were like milestones, small moments of security she savored. They had always lived alone, and she enjoyed it. She loved their house and the 17 Short Story

18 Short Story trees and the solitude, but on certain days she wished there was someone around to fix the stove when it broke or get Kuiper to play outside.

Sometimes, when he stayed for dinner, she would try out new recipes, Kuiper reading off the instructions to her as she stirred in spices and chopped vegetables. They listened to his mother’s old records as she cooked. She enjoyed music with a halting beat, a certain discontinuity that spun her feet around the kitchen floor in a dance that made Kuiper laugh and roll his eyes. Sometimes he sang along to the music, but most days he just read his books.

On a warm spring night after an unforgiving winter with few visits from Garth, he appeared on their doorstep with a tall rectangular box wrapped in brown paper. Anita answered the door. You’re back, she said. You cut your hair, he said. She fingered the braid that only reached midway down her back now and flipped it over her shoulder: I usually do in the winter.

He chuckled and told her she had it backwards. Everyone knows you’re supposed to get a haircut in the summertime.

She eyed the package in his hand. Is Kuiper here? The boy skidded in his socks to get to the door and peeked his head behind his mother. Is that for me?

Anita invited him in. She warmed up leftover pie and they ate in the kitchen, leaving Kuiper on the porch to discover what was inside the package. He ran his hands along the seam of tape and pealed it back, taking care not to tear the wrapping. The box inside was brown too, cardboard leaking no details about what was inside. He pried it open and pulled out a long cylinder, then several circular pieces that looked like lenses. It was a telescope. He pulled out the rest of the pieces, carefully placing them on the stoop before beginning to fit them together. By the time the adults had finished eating and come to check on him, he had finished assembling it.

How does it work? Garth asked. Kuiper was positioning the scope towards the sky, he moved to show Garth how to adjust the lens, then pointed it upwards.

The moon looks amazing with this! He looked out into the night, up at the infinitesimal stars his father loved. There were so many worlds, he was learning. So many constellations and galaxies. A multiverse of stories. He straightened and tipped the telescope towards his mother. Come look, Mom!

She looked back at Garth for a moment, You really shouldn’t spoil him, his mother said as she bent to look through the scope.

Garth stood back to watch, looking up at the sky, hands in his pockets.

Kuiper showed her how to position it against her eye to get the best view. See?

Mh-hm, she said; It’s beautiful. She handed the telescope back to her son and placed a hand on his head before she stepped back. She sat on the stoop and pulled the cardigan she had knitted more tightly around herself, looking out at her boys in the yard.