“I miss you,” she says quietly. At this very window she’d sit for hours, not moving but eyes searching the heavens. Out there was the rural sky so full of stars, and him.
This was better than in the city with its noisy crowds and department stores. All those people with televisions flickering into the late hours. Those city people simply couldn’t see the stars, not like she could now. And the swishes of light seemed brighter on damp autumn evenings, didn’t they?
In his precise way she would listen to him tell the story of his coming transit. Nightly, she’d seduce stories from him, though she knew them all beat-by-beat. It was his voice she wanted to hear – so clear, so measured in cadence. He’d raise his long fingers, pointing out the Gods and their lessers and say their names with such reverence.
He would pause outside and look back. Visor down to block the brilliant sun, he’d see a drop of blue getting ever smaller. After some time he’d only be able to imagine the place he once called home. But she understood this dirt and rock was transient for him. His life should be lived somewhere deep, beyond the charted cosmos. She wanted that for him.
With a squint into that void it felt as if she could see him out there, alone, in his tin can – tumbling, floating – as he dared to push further from reach.
His voice was thin, but firm, as the radio waves carried a last message, “Tell my wife I love her very much.”
She knew.
***
Music to read by: Space Oddity by David Bowie
Backstory
I’ve had a rough version of this sitting around for a while. Like with When We Arrive it has roots in music as a companion piece.
Two lines from Bowie’s Space Oddity always struck me as odd:
Tell my wife I love her very much
She knows
First, they seemed like throwaway lines in a song of mostly technical details (sung with a wee bit of existential dread). The second is in cadence, “she knows” comes almost on top of the previous line. As if the respondent – we’ll assume NASA – just blurts it out to appease the astronaut: There, there, Major Tom.
In any case, I thought Mrs. Tom might have a few thoughts of her own, melancholy as they might be. And don’t think for a minute I didn’t consider throwing in some twist like: Mrs. Tom knows about his affairs and her last line is the revelation. I can hear my wife call me out, “you always like a twist!” A-ha! Not this time.
Instead, I went more dutiful and, sure, a little schmaltzy, too. But, I hopefully left enough ambiguity as to why she’d want that for him. After all, did she know the circuits would go dead after saying he loves her?
Such a lyrical line: " Out there was the rural sky so full of stars, and him." Before your explanation at the bottom, my engaged imagination took this little story somewhere completely different. It was a reminder to me that our readers interpret our words as they will, and it is not always where we intended.
As I was reading it the song "Brandy" came to mind about a girl in a small coastal town who fell in love with a sailor who, she knew, loved the sea more than her. She would listen rapt to his sailor stories... but would never have him.