The Chaos of Stars

I move to a large vase depicting both of them, my mother with the cow-horn headdress and huge, outstretched wings, my father with green skin, the color of rebirth. “Isis’s motherhood and fertility ushers in life, and Osiris rules over the transition of that life to a new one. They are birth and death and rebirth, an eternal cycle, each incomplete without the other.” I smile. “Of course, like all couples, they had speed bumps: arguments over whose turn it was to wash the pottery; Osiris leaving his crook and staff by the foot of the bed where Isis was constantly tripping on them; that time Osiris sired Anubis with Isis’s sister Nephthys, the wife of Set. Families are complicated, and ancient Egyptian deities were no exception.”

I gesture to a fresco on the wall of my mother, again with the cow-horn headdress, standing next to Whore-us in all his falcon-headed glory and the sun god Amun-Re. The fresco is covered with elaborate hieroglyphs. I realize with a start that they are in my mother’s own hand, her secret writing. She made this one herself. It’s all I can do not to reach up and trace the words.

Idiot gods help me, I miss her.

“Horus, a miracle child conceived after Isis brought Osiris back from the dead, took his father’s place as the god-king of Egypt. He was his mother’s pride and joy. She even went so far as to poison the sun god to trick him into revealing his name to her, forever giving herself and her son power over the most powerful god. It takes the concept of an overcompetitive soccer mom to a whole new level.”

I smile and wait for the laughter to stop. “So imagine her despair,

after everything she did to get Horus here and then secure his place among the gods, when he married Hathor, the goddess of sex and beer. You thought your daughter-in-law was hard to get along with. . . .”

It continues like that, as I detail the story of my family, mixing mythology with the personalities the audience has no idea these gods have. I even use dear old Thoth’s story of how he added extra days to the calendar to trick the Sun into letting the Sky have her children. By the end I am both exhausted and elated. As I discuss the murder of Osiris and make a joke about the rather overwhelming depiction of the vital manparts Isis magically made out of clay for the resurrected Osiris, I feel a strange sense of tenderness toward my parents. As screwed up as they are, I can’t deny the impact they had on an entire culture. It’s an impact that even thousands of years haven’t been able to erase entirely. Somehow, talking about their dual roles has helped me reconcile my parents with their godly attributes.

And then I’m done, and everyone is applauding and breaking off into groups to look at the exhibits, and I watch it all with glowing pride, knowing that I made this room, but my parents made the stories that filled it. Even if I won’t last forever, I’m still a part of this because it’s a part of me.

Sirus and Deena walk up. “It’s like you really know them!” Deena says.

Sirus and I laugh. She gives us a strange look, then sways on her feet.

“You look exhausted. Go home. Ry can give me a ride when everything’s done.” I hug them both and send them on their way.

Speaking of Ry . . . I look around the room, grateful yet again that being tall gives me a good vantage point. How do short people ever find anyone in a crowd?

I see him in the corner, talking with a couple. The man is hard-looking, all blocky features like he was clumsily and carelessly carved out of rough limestone. It isn’t until he walks toward me and I see his limp that I realize he’s Ry’s father. Which makes the woman his mother. She turns and I stare, slack-jawed. Scott and Tyler weren’t kidding—she is the single most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She has Ry’s same dark hair; it trails down her back in thick, luxurious curls. All the parts of her that should be curvy are soft and perfect, and the parts that should be small are almost exaggeratedly so. Her bust in their entryway couldn’t even begin to do her features justice.

I feel ragingly inadequate being in the same room as her. But then she takes her husband’s arm in her own and smiles at him, and it’s so obvious that she loves him—completely—and somehow that makes me feel better. They walk up to me and I have no idea what to say to them. What do I say to them?

“This is lovely,” Ry’s mom says, smiling. She is why the Greeks wrote poetry.

“I couldn’t have done it without Ry. Thanks for letting me steal his time this last week.”

She laughs, and Ry’s dad twists his features into a smile. He’s not handsome, but he’s so solid, and there’s something about his face that is both powerful and kind. I like him already. There’s something familiar, comforting about both of them. Maybe just because I’ve been in their home and now it makes more sense.

“He’s never been happier,” she says.

“Oh, hey.” Ry stands to the side of us, fidgeting, like he doesn’t want me to be talking to his parents. “Umm, Mom, Dad, didn’t you have that thing to get to?”

They laugh, then hug Ry, and we exchange good-byes. As they leave, his mom turns and makes eye contact with me, giving me a secret smile. That must be where he gets it. Curse those secretive dimpled genes!

Everyone gradually filters out, with many handshakes and congratulations, and even a business card from a real estate agent and an offer to dress houses she’s trying to sell. Tyler and Scott head into the hall with Michelle to supervise the table cleanup, and I look across the starry eternity room to see Ry there, beaming at me.

We walk toward each other, meeting in the middle. Screw it all. I want this. I want him.

“You did it,” he says.

“We did it,” I answer.

I throw my arms around his neck and press my lips against his, and they are warm and soft and answer mine immediately. A thousand feelings burst through me, feelings I never wanted or even knew existed, and I am floating in the stars with Orion. My Orion. I want more more more of him, I want to map out a new chart of stars in my soul, stars that let him in.

I kiss him, and I am reborn.

Finally we pull apart, arms wrapped around each other. “Orion,” I whisper, his name a love song and a hopeful prayer.

“Isadora,” he says, “I have been waiting to do that for years.”

“What do you mean, years? We just barely—,” I start, and it’s only then that I realize he said every word of that sentence in a different, obscure language. Languages he couldn’t possibly know, languages that no normal person would even know existed, much less be able to speak. Unless . . .

Chaos take us all.