The Same Stuff as Stars

“I don’t like Liza Irwin. Never have.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you and Miss Liza. This is about you and Ray.”

“I don’t feel so good.”

There was no use begging or arguing. Angel grabbed her jacket and went out to where the old Buick waited. Miss Liza, her head almost on her lap, was in the passenger seat, so Angel got in the back. Miss Liza twisted her head to speak to her. “Is Erma coming?”

“She says she doesn’t feel well.”

“Oh.”

The ride into Barre was mostly a silent one. Occasionally, Miss Liza’s great-nephew—he looked to be about twenty-five, though Angel had no real way of judging the age of a grownup—said something quietly to Miss Liza, who answered in a few also quiet words. She was thinking, Angel could tell, but what she was thinking Angel had no way of knowing.

She stared out the window at the bleak late-autumn landscape....Today was Halloween. It fit somehow with all the craziness of her life—all the ghosts, all the goblins. The trees had long since dropped their leaves, which lay brown and soggy in the ditches and across the road. The same bored cows grazed the fields. Angel wondered if they remembered her—how she and Bernie had stuck out their tongues and laughed. Probably not. Cows wouldn’t care as long as they had grass to eat. They weren’t like people, with feelings of lonesomeness and worrying about what might happen next. That was just people, wasn’t it? Sure, you could scare a cow, but wouldn’t they get over it as soon as you let them be? They didn’t stand around fretting about the next scare and the next and the next.

She wondered for the millionth time where Bernie was and if he was scared. Was Verna taking good care of him, feeding him right, and making sure he was safe and happy? If only she could count on Verna to do it right....And Wayne. Had she done the right thing, letting him go? Would she ever know what the right thing was? Well, Grandma wasn’t doing the right thing, either, but at least Grandma knew she was messing up.

***

The nurse wouldn’t let Miss Liza and her nephew see Ray. They weren’t kin. Only kin could go into Intensive Care. Angel hadn’t been in a hospital since she was born. They hadn’t let her go to see Bernie when he was born. She had been too little. The smell was sharp and hurt her eyes, and when the nurse took her in to where Ray was, it was like some scene in a science-fiction horror movie. She had never properly seen the star man’s face. It had always been dark without much moon, but there he lay, perfectly still against his pillows with wires and tubes stuck all over him. The only sound in the room was a weird whooshing. Someone had cut his hair and trimmed his beard close. His face lay grayish against the white linen, his lips were sunk and ridged. His eyes were closed. There was no way she would have taken him for the magical star man. This was Ray Morgan, or what was left of him. He looked shriveled, older than Grandma.

“You got a visitor, Mr. Morgan.” The nurse’s voice made Angel jump.

The face on the pillow turned toward her, and the eyes opened. “Angel,” he said.

“Hi.” She didn’t know what to call him. She’d never called him anything out loud.

“Mama didn’t come, I take it.”

“She wasn’t feeling too good.”

He half smiled. “It’s okay. You came.” He closed his eyes again as though he was too tired to hold up his lids for any length of time.

She didn’t know what to say next. She just stood there, wondering what you were supposed to say to a person lying in a hospital looking like he was about to die.

“I been missing you,” she said finally.

“I been missing you, too,” he said, opening his eyes again. “Listen. If I don’t come through the operation tomorrow, I want you to have the telescope. Don’t let anybody say different, okay? I don’t want Mama selling it off.”

“What do you mean? It’s yours. You’ll be needing it.”

“No. Probably not.”

She went cold all over. “You can’t die,” she said.

“I guess I can, Angel.”

“I don’t want you to die.”

“I appreciate that. I

’m not crazy to die myself, but I have a feeling I’m due.”

“No.” She said it stubbornly, angrily. He had no business dying.

“It’s just my old worn-out body, Angel. I never treated it right, and now it’s payback time.”

“You’re not as old as Grandma, and she’s not about to die.”