Andromeda's Curtain

Andromeda shifted to first gear, slowing to a crawl on the bridge as the wind whipped her little pickup truck side to side. As a racecar driver, she felt impatient going this slow. As she inched past two cars stopped on the shoulder of the road, she couldn’t help looking, but then she noticed everyone else gawking too. She was not the only one. The front of one car looked like an accordion and the back of the other was worse, flattened completely. A torn leather jacket and one tennis shoe littered the space around the cars, as did a darkly colored liquid, probably something from inside the cars. The drivers were absent and there were no emergency vehicles, nothing, just an absence. Two minutes ago she would have seen the whole thing unfold, or rather, human bodies folding, compressing, inner becoming outer.

The accident scene reminded her of the TV show she often watched where they aired re-enactments of catastrophic car accidents. In one episode a huge pipe slipped off the back of a truck, piercing the front window of the car in back and cutting through the driver’s chest. You watched along with his wife, in the passenger seat. But the TV show was nothing compared to the sensation of horror she experienced when she read her favorite kind of books. Actually, she no longer read any other kind. She had no place for fiction with the myriad of titles on terror: Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, Hitler’s personal and public life, the SS, anything on the Third Reich and Nazi Germany. Journalistic accounts of Yugoslavia and the Croatia-Serb conflict of 1991 attracted her, especially the slaughter in the Eastern Croatian city of Vukovar, unfolded in a journalist’s account of people prodded through a cattle slaughtering plant on their hands and knees. She devoured a backlog of history and monitored recent events, and while her friends called her morbid, her co-workers at the bookstore availed themselves of her knowledge to make customer recommendations.

Her friend Sophie had called her at work, speaking in a strained voice. Sophie’s father had died suddenly and inexplicably. Of course she knew who to call first.

"Can you talk? Sorry to disturb you at work Andi."

But at the horrible news, Andromeda wasted no time. "I’m coming right over. Oh, and do you need anything?"

On the bridge, Andromeda felt comforted to see others staring at the two smashed cars, for it balanced her embarrassment at other’s comments on her morbidity. It was simply human nature, nothing more. As she exited the bridge and onto the highway towards Sophie’s place, she thought of the first time she met catastrophe. The memory became the present, full-formed. It was years after her real father had left and her mother had remarried. Her stepfather Ed had come home late one night, as he usually did, while the whole family sat at the table eating dinner. Andromeda pictured it as if was happening.

Andromeda’s mother, her two sisters and two brothers did not look up when Ed struggled with the lock on the front door, then stumbled on the carpet. They all continued grazing, they had seen this display before. Andromeda was the oldest and always sat next to her mother, so patted the skirt of her mother’s apron to get her attention. Ed’s clothes were getting ratty. He wouldn’t let his wife groom him in any way for months and he began looking physically like the alcoholic he was, eyes pinched so you could barely see his pupils. Andromeda stood up, next to her mother.

Ed spoke, stumbling towards Andromeda’s mother, spitting saliva instead of words. It looked like he might fall into her head first.

"Tess honey, sorry I’m late—"

And with that he did fall, or flew rather, landing on the table, upsetting the chicken which her mother had arranged beautifully on the platter, surrounded by potatoes and carrots. The large knife on the table went flying too. It was meant for cutting the chicken into pieces as her mother always liked to present the whole bird. A moment later Ed lay on the floor beneath her mother’s feet, blood draining from where the knife had pierced his chest. Her mother’s glass of V-8 juice, which always sat beside her no matter which meal, had gone flying and it was hard to distinguish the juice’s tomato-carrot from the blood.

"Ed! Ed!," her mother yelled.

But Andromeda could only stand beside her mother helplessly, then beside the empty chair as her mother bent down to place napkins under the blood. She heard her mother shout but could not respond.

"Andi, call 911!"

But it was as if she were underwater, as if it weren’t really happening.

Driving beyond the accident scene on the bridge, Andromeda’s head was not on the bridge. She continued to think about Ed’s accident.

Ed survived because, as the doctor said, the knife just missed his right aorta. Lying on the hospital bed for weeks, one day he promised Andromeda he would resume his AA meetings. He held her hand and told her he loved her mother, which she knew. Ed just couldn’t control his fits of anger. Andromeda had overheard her mother on the phone to a friend, speaking of Ed’s own parents and how they had beat him. She had to quietly leave the room before her mother saw her. When Ed’s fist broke through the bedroom door, she could hear her mother screaming, "Ed, no— " The next morning her mother had a black eye but Ed would be there just the same, sitting at the breakfast table, his hand caressing his wife’s back, his eyes downcast. Andromeda couldn’t help feel sorry for them both.

Ed was blind drunk the night he smashed up the family car. Fortunately for the other driver, Ed swerved into a ditch and hit an oak tree, denting the hearty tree a little and breaking a few of his ribs. He had been on the way to pick up the two little ones from school. Andromeda’s mother had threatened to separate from him after the incident, she had told her years later, because what if Ed had been coming from school with the kids instead. After that Ed had started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

In spite of Ed’s abusive relationship with her mother, Andromeda had a special affection for him because he supported her flights of fancy—skateboarding, tennis competitions, bicycle racing. And later, when she moved out on her own and was discriminated against as a female race car driver, he came over and took her out dinner, praising her worth. So she had tried to protect her mother from Ed during his outbursts, and because he never would hit Andromeda or the other kids in the crossfire of his fists, she could benefit from his unique style of parenting. "Be true to yourself," Ed always said to all the kids. And while it seemed a corny phrase, it was also a generous attitude. She later realized that for a parent to push aside expectation and encourage a child to do what he or she needed, was unique. Perhaps because Ed wasn’t their real father the pressure was off. But then their real father had left when the youngest was just two years old. Andromeda was thirteen—old enough to receive the full damages of separation.

Her real father was an astronomer, which accounted for Andromeda’s given name, representative of the largest galaxy. But he must have lost his enthusiasm for naming his children after parts of the universe, because after the second child, Cassiopeia was born (she called herself "Cass" for short,) her parents chose more typical names like Tom and Julie. Andromeda’s family and childhood friends all called her "Andi," but the name-callers in grade school and high school made weird noises around her because of the scary movie called The Andromeda Strain, about aliens or a strange disease. She never saw the movie.

But Andromeda also learned of the beauty of her name—that like the Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy was a giant spiral-shaped disk of stars, with a bulbous central hub of older stars. Her father set up his huge telescope in their backyard anytime celestial events warranted, which was frequently. Peering through the lens, she could see how her galaxy was very bright in the center and that the diameter, as her father said, was twice that of the Milky Way spiral. The universe was not only part of her, but part of her tie with him. When he left she missed him. But she didn’t miss the pressure. He called her his "little astronomer," not realizing her predilection for thrills, even when she was caught riding a double-level skateboard she had made, which toted behind it two other skateboards, kids riding on them. Her dangerous antics didn’t sit well with her mother, but they really displeased her father. She just couldn’t see herself staring at the little reflective bits in the sky every night like him, nor sitting at charts for hours at a desk. Once, when she stayed home sick from school, he took her along to his job at the large observatory across the bay. She wondered, how could he stand it? Standing in one place that long made her want to scream. It was no wonder she picked the opposite profession, zooming as quickly as possible around a track. She imagined herself as a comet shooting through the sky as the scenery became a blur, as she screeched around the curves in her bright green Porche.

As she adjusted to her stepfather, about a year after her father’s departure, Andromeda seemed to do better. For while her own father didn’t pay much attention to the kids outside of telescope viewing, Ed did. Until he started drinking heavily.

Ed’s recovery from the knife injury was difficult for Andromeda as she had never been close to someone who almost died. She had given him up for dead as he lay there on the fading green carpet, red flowing out of his body, her mother bending over and putting her fingers on his wrist to check his pulse. Andromeda did not want to lose a second father but she couldn’t do anything to stop it either. She could only see white, hear through cotton. It must be what interstellar dust of a galaxy looked, the world bleached in dust for the few minutes it took between the time it took one of her sisters to call for the ambulance and the moment their front door seemed to burst open with the attendants in white and a stretcher. In another moment, Ed and her mother were gone with the screaming call of the siren, their front door ajar. She heard it fade until she could barely distinguish it from the birds’ chirping in the trees in their front yard. Then the siren was gone. Color came back to the dining room—the deep blue tablecloth with yellow candlesticks, the chicken lying on the bright green carpet, the pattern of red spattered over the chicken. She could hear. She could see.

Her sister Jaime called her. "Andi, are you alright?"

She heard the tea kettle squealing on the stove and walked unsteadily into the kitchen. Breathe, breathe, she told herself.

She had almost lost Ed that day. And now she helped others with their own traumatic events. She assisted them in shock, grief, illness, recovery from illness. She helped people move, took them out to dinner or on walks to the beach with her dogs, which seemed a tonic for some. When her dog Max rolled over, exposing his belly, people invariably couldn’t help rubbing it, the smile emanating from their faces proof of Max’s cure. But in situations related to injury or death she always re-experienced the symptoms she experienced with Ed’s accident. She was unable to get beyond it. Every time, she hoped that she could, and at times she even seemed to be making progress. Recently she had been spending time at an ex-coworker’s hospital bed. No one cared for the woman much but she was diagnosed with a fast-working cancer. Andromeda had set herself up as a liaison between the Cheryl and their ex-coworkers, encouraging people to visit the white room in the cavernous building. She hadn’t known Cheryl very well, but as she sat beside her Andromeda learned how isolated her new friend had always felt, but unable to break through the barrier. So she wanted the others to know the real Cheryl too, not just the façade they had worked with. Andromeda was impressed with Cheryl’s fight against the illness that would surely consume her. The doctors had a surprisingly good beside manner, but even they couldn’t hide the truth. Still, Cheryl rallied daily. And Andromeda visited her daily.

Andromeda turned off the freeway exit to make a left, then turned right onto the street that would take her all the way up the hill to Sophie’s. She knew her friend from the bookstore, where they had worked together for a year. They had discovered they were born one day apart, even though Andromeda thought that Sophie looked younger. They discussed their past histories as easily as discussing books. They had exchanged friendship rings. It turned out they both veered towards depression, though Sophie hadn’t tried to take her own life like Andromeda had, years ago when she and her husband moved to New York City. Andromeda had wasted no time telling Sophie all about the virtues of her anti-depressant, even though she had promised not to.

Sophie opened the front door, bundled in a warm sweater even though the night was a mild one. Her eyes were red but not watery. She probably had wiped her face before coming to the door. Andromeda hugged Sophie briefly, for though she knew Sophie was uncomfortable with being physical, she felt the situation called for it.

Her friend waved her in, motioning to the plump couch. "Entre—"

Andromeda sat herself to one side of the couch.

"Whisky?" asked Sophie, pouring herself a large one. "They do this in the movies, don’t they?" she chuckled.

"Yeh, but also in real life," Andromeda said. "When my uncle died, my dad swung back a few." Her own father rarely drank, so it had seemed significant at the time, before Ed. She took the glass from Sophie, a small amount of golden liquid. Like syrup it lingered as it made its way down the sides of the glass.

Sophie carefully sat down on the other side of the sofa. She was quiet now and Andromeda knew not to try to talk much, not to press her friend, just to sit there and keep her company. Andromeda had missed her real father at first, but he loomed in the past now—like the stars he was present, yet she only saw him occasionally. Sophie could never see hers again, and Andromeda thought maybe she could comfort her friend with thoughts of the stars, ever present. But sitting on the couch, the living room looked as if someone pulled a layer of film over it, dulling everything but softening it as well. The red pillows on the couch seemed pink tonight, the midnight blue curtains had faded to pastel.

Sophie spoke through the haze. "I called Alessandro—he’ll be here soon. He’s gonna take me down there." She slurred her words. Andromeda wondered how many whiskies she had poured out already.

"You mean he’s taking you to Monterey?"

"Yes, thank God."

Alessandro, Sophie’s ex-husband, always came in to pinch hit. Sophie smiled a bit. Maybe Andromeda was helping by talking to her. She asked, "when will he be here?"

"Oh, in about an hour. He’s working the night shift at the store. They close at nine."

They all knew each other from the book business. Even if you didn’t work at the same store you knew everyone’s business, it was such a small community.

Andromeda said, "I heard they put him in charge of kids books."

"Yes, he’s reading to the kids on Sundays now. Its funny you know, because that’s what I used to do."

Sophie chuckled. She had finished her scotch and was looking at the empty glass.

Andromeda got up. "Do you want another?," she asked her friend.

"Yes please," Sophie quickly replied, extending her arm out with the glass in her hand.

Sophie normally drank very little but the alcohol was probably stabilizing her. She said, finally addressing the matter, "It was my brother who called."

Andromeda shook her head. "Yes—"

"They don’t know what happened. He had an attack of some kind, out of the blue. My mother won’t talk. I’ve gotta go."

"Of course, you have to."

But Sophie continued as though Andromeda hadn’t responded.

"He was in perfect health. That’s the thing, it doesn’t make sense."

Sophie stared ahead of her. Andromeda wondered what her friend saw or heard.

Sophie said, "I’m sure it will hit me later."

"Yes, but your brother, how did he sound?"

"Sounds like he’s having a hard time—well of course—" She coughed a little. "He said he would wait up until we got there. But that won’t be until midnight, I bet. Andi—don’t you think?" Sophie looked Andromeda in the eye now.

Andromeda reassured her friend, "Yes, but maybe it won’t take that long at this time of night. With no traffic, I mean."

Sophie stared down again at the floor. "Andi, you are so lucky. Having two fathers I mean."

Andromeda wanted to respond, to say no, my own father left. But in a way it was true. She had reaped the gifts of both fathers—she was the essence of both. She nodded to Sophie, yes.

She thought about her hungry dogs at home. Her husband was out of town for the week. But she would stay with Sophie until Alessandro showed up. So she continued to sit on the couch, white film covering her eyes like a curtain, smooth and seamless. She was in her own galaxy, familiar, yet unknown in a way. She thought of the nights looking out the telescope with her father. He had told her that as graduate student he had published a study on the Andromeda galaxy. And he promised that hers was a spiral galaxy, speaking in a loving voice as if he were talking about friends—about open clusters, interstellar matter, supernova. The words had flowed around her then, forming a world, as they flowed around her now—words which at once seemed remote and near.

But Sophie interrupted her thoughts. "Andi, tell me about your father, your real father."

            Andromeda awoke from the night, from the galaxy she had traveled to. She looked up. Sophie stood next to the couch and placed another glass in Andromeda’s hand—V-8 juice, her mother’s favorite. Then at once, the film lifted. Sophie’s voice was clear. Like bells her voice came not from across a great distance, but nearby. Andromeda stood up and put her arms around her friend.