Cousins
THE CEMETERY IS NOT A LARGE ONE. I had no trouble finding her grave.
I knew, of course, that by this time she would be dead.
Her mother’s grave and her father’s grave are close to hers. She had no brothers or sisters.
I took her to the stars with me. I tried to leave her behind, but I could not. But my fellow astronauts, Beaumont and Morris, did not know I had brought her with me. This was because I never let the memory of her show on my face.
The roses which I placed upon her grave have already begun to wither in the summer sun.
Again I read the bleak inscription on her headstone: Beth Hullman. Born: April 6, 1989. Died: May 4, 2021.
Hullman was her family name, so I know she never married.
But why did she die so young?
I would have married you, Beth. I wanted to. But if I had, they’d have scratched my name from the list.
Astronauts slated to edge the speed of light must be free from all earthly ties.
I had to make a choice. I chose the stars.
I learned to hate them, Beth. They turned blue and laughed at me while the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction made a mockery of my life.
Old-young, I stand here by your grave. Would that I lay beside you.
* * *
A wind comes out of nowhere and bends the sun-bleached grass. The maples along the narrow cemetery road whisper to each other in its breath. The new sun-celled roadster I bought with part of my back pay sits in the afternoon shade. There is another roadster parked just behind it. A sleek, red Ponse. I did not hear it drive in. A girl in a white summer dress steps out of it and walks toward me between the graves. She walks the way Beth walked, with a light, sure step. Her hair is dark brown and recalcitrant, the way Beth’s used to be, and she has combed it to her shoulders the way Beth once combed hers. Her face is full, like Beth’s, and her nose is Beth’s nose too, sweeping down with delicate grace from between dark birdwing brows.
I do not believe in ghosts, but I am shaken when she comes to a halt before me. She is staring at me as though my reality has upset her as much as hers has upset me. Then I see that her face, despite its strong resemblance to Beth’s is not quite the same. It is full, yes, but it lacks the little-girl aspect Beth’s had, and there is greater determination in the line of her rounded chin. Nor does it possess the “beauty mark” that adorned Beth’s left cheek. But the eyes!—they are the same: deep brown, with microscopic flecks of gold . . .
For a long while she does not speak. It is as though all the words she ever knew have fled from her mind. Then she leans forward and kisses me on the cheek and says, just the way Beth would have, “Welcome home.”
She does not need to tell me who she is. I know. But the knowledge came too late.
* * *
Why didn’t you tell me, Beth? Why didn’t you say, “Jerry, you have to marry me now.”
I’d have said to hell with the stars!
Children grow up and beget children—did you think of that, Beth? And they, in turn, grow up and beget more children. You told our son or our daughter who I was, Beth, so that in the far future there would be someone to welcome me home. But Beth, you forgot about your genes!
If you had told me you were going to have our child, then at least I would have been prepared. I would not have been caught like this, with all my defenses down.
But then, if you had told me, I wouldn’t have gone to the stars.
Why didn’t you say, “Jerry, you have to marry me now.”
* * *
“I’ve been driving by here every day,” my great granddaughter says. “I was sure that sooner or later you’d visit her grave.”
Why didn’t you come to White Sands? You wouldn’t have been permitted to talk to me, but you could have waved to me when we climbed down from the ship. This is what I want to say, but I stand like Prufrock in the sun and say instead, “I brought roses for her grave.”
She looks down at them. “I love roses. She must have, too.”
“She died so young. Why?”
She does not lift her eyes quite back to mine. Instead she rests them on the pocket of my shirt. “It became a melanoma. The ‘beauty mark’ on her cheek. When she found out, it was too late.”
It is some time before the shock fades away. By then she has lifted her eyes the rest of the way to mine. What a deep brown they are! How pied with flecks of gold!
“I guess you know who I am.”
I nod my head.
“She never told you she was going to have a baby, did she.”
“No, she never did.”
“My name is Robinette. Robinette Fields. But most people just call me Robin.”
“You—you live in town?”
“In a big, pretentious house. My father is the General Manager of Metrobank.”
“My grandson?”
“Yes. My grandmother—your daughter—is the Head Librarian of the McKinnseyville Library. Her husband died last year.”
It was a girl then . . . Why didn’t she come to White Sands?
“You have another grandson, but he lives in California. He never married.”
“Do—do you have brothers? Sisters?”
She smiles the way Beth used to when she had something rueful to say, and for a moment I am again convinced she has risen from her grave. “No. I’m the last of the Fields. But I’m going to carry on as best a mere girl can. I’ve graduated from law school and I just passed my bar exam, and this fall I’m joining a law firm. There, now that I’ve filled you in, you can come home with me.”
I would rather plunge into a black hole. “I think it will be better if I just continue on my way.”
“You’ll do no such thing!”
“Robin, I can’t go home with you.”
“Yes, you can. And just where were you going anyway before you found out about your family tree?”
Nowhere. But I cannot tell her that. “Robin, I’m an, an anachronism—don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t see. Please get in your car and follow me.”
* * *
END OF SAMPLE
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