Light from Distant Stars Read online

  Cohen stood there on that first day of practice in clean jeans and a white T-shirt and a red Philadelphia Phillies hat, staring into what seemed to be a cloud of electrons bouncing off each other—some kind of childlike attempt at creation, with random things colliding and erupting and amalgamating. He felt very much an outsider. There he stood, so still, so out of place, removed from that joyful, chaotic cloud of newness.

  “Hey,” the only girl on the field shouted. “Wanna throw?”

  Cohen gawked at her for a moment, the one who had said those precious words. He looked up at his father anxiously, and his father nodded.

  “Go on,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  Cohen walked hesitantly onto the dirt field, his new baseball cleats rubbing on his heels, the static of those wild electrons alive all around him. The girl who had asked him to throw wore jeans torn at the knee and regular old tennis shoes, and her shirt was nearly washed through, but she walked around the field like she had been created for that diamond-shaped space.

  The two of them threw the grass-stained baseball back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, finding a rhythm. At first Cohen had been uncertain about throwing with a girl, but he soon realized she was as good as him—no, she was better. The fields stretched out behind her on the other side of the tracks, and the sky was bigger than anything that had ever been. The air filled with the sound of baseballs hitting the chain-link fence or skidding across the hard dirt or making muffled trails into the grassy outfield. But with Cohen and his new friend, it was all thwop, thwop, thwop as the ball settled into each of their gloves. Back and forth without a drop, without a miss.

  “I’m Ava,” the girl called over to him as he threw the ball.

  Cohen caught the information like a line drive and smiled. “I’m Cohen,” he shouted. He threw the ball back, and for two nine-year-olds, the exchange of names was exhilarating, like finding a piece of fool’s gold in the driveway.

  His first baseball practice might have faded from his memory if it hadn’t been for the sound of the train, the blast of its whistle, the deep rumble of its approach. But he looked at the tracks just as Ava threw the ball, and she realized what was happening and shouted, “Cohen!” He looked back in time to raise his glove, palm up, but the ball was too high so it skimmed like a skipping rock and collided with Cohen’s nose.

  Stars.

  The beginning of the universe.

  The inside of an atom, spinning.

  Arcs of light and the rush of the train and he was on his back, on the dirt, opening his eyes to the blue sky and oozing liquid drip drip dripping from his nose. He sat up, and kneeling beside him was his father and his new coach and his new friend, Ava. The blood dripped rhythmically down his upper lip, and he leaned forward and it dripped onto his white T-shirt in long streaks and onto his jeans, leaving small almost-black spots in the blue denim. He put his head back to keep from getting more on his clothes, imagining his mother’s wrath, but it ran down the sides of his cheeks and trickled the smooth length of his neck. He could taste it in his throat, a slippery metallic kind of choking. He coughed.

  “Spit it out. Go ahead,” his father said, and Cohen heard embarrassment there in his flat voice, and a hint of shame that his son couldn’t catch a ball thrown by a girl.

  His coach led him through the arc of children staring, all baseballs suddenly motionless, horrified at this unforeseen outcome. He led Cohen through the dust rising in that early summer dusk, all the way to the bench, where he sat down and put his head back and held an old rag to his nose until the bleeding stopped. His father washed his face with water from the team thermos. It was cold, ice cold like melted snow, and he drank some too, to get the rest of the blood cleared from his mouth and the back of his throat.

  Cohen locked eyes with Ava, and Ava squinted back and shrugged an apology. Cohen gave her a thumbs-up, which it turns out, in nine-year-old lingo, is the foundation of a friendship.

  nine

  The Trocar

  “Oh, Dad,” Kaye says, her head tilting to one side, tears welling up in her eyes. She reaches down and feels under the blanket for one of his hands. The machines beep on and on and on.

  Cohen looks over at Beth.

  “Are you okay?” he asks her.

  She nods, biting her bottom lip. “I can’t believe I found him,” she says, her voice trailing off.

  “I’m sorry,” Cohen replies. “I’m really sorry, Beth.”

  She gives another quick nod, wipes her eyes. “I should get back to the funeral home. The police are still there.”

  “Call me if you need anything,” Cohen says. “Anything. We’ll sort it all out.”

  Beth leaves. Cohen watches as the numbers fluctuate on the machines, realizing he could easily sit there all day and become absorbed in the gradual rising and falling of his father’s heart rate, anticipating the regular intervals. The blood pressure cuff suddenly vibrates and hums, filling with air, measuring, and spouting off new numbers to be examined and tracked.

  A nurse moves wordlessly around the room, adjusting this, making notes on that, propping Calvin up by sticking another pillow under his back. When she walks out, Cohen allows himself to look at his dad, really look at him, and what he sees is a human being he barely recognizes.

  His father’s skin is already graying, already fading. His mouth is slightly open, as if caught mid-sentence, and his eyes are closed. There is a large bandage under his jaw, above his voice box. His bald head reflects the light, and his ears seem larger now, as everything else about him shrinks away.

  “Who was that outside the room?” Kaye asks Cohen, still rubbing their father’s hand under the blanket. She seems to be seeking out distractions.

  “What? Oh, that was strange. Do you remember my friend Ava from elementary school?”

  “Vaguely,” Kaye says. “Maybe not.”

  Cohen nods. “I think she’s a police officer now. Or a detective. I don’t know. She said she wants to ask me some questions.”

  Kaye looks back at their father. “What happened, Cohen?” She doesn’t look up. She seems to go suddenly still, like a Catherine wheel when the wind dies away.

  “I know as much as you do, Kaye,” he says, glancing over at Johnny. “You okay, buddy?”

  “Is Grandpa dead?” the boy asks matter-of-factly.

  “No!” Kaye erupts, carefully releasing her father’s hand before gliding over to Johnny and kneeling down beside his chair. “No. Everything will be fine.”

  Cohen shakes his head but doesn’t say anything. No, his father is not dead. He walks past Kaye and Johnny, over to the large window that looks out from his father’s seventh-floor room. From that height, he can look over the city blocks, the streets, the alleys. He reaches up and puts his hand against the glass, and the coldness of it grounds him in that place. He is there, in the hospital. He is there, with his sister and nephew, and his father is dying.

  Far below him, Cohen sees a woman standing on her front porch. Of all the houses that line that particular street, she is the only one outside. She’s holding a baby, pacing back and forth. It’s hard to tell from that far up, but it seems she is bopping up and down as she walks, perhaps trying to put the bundle to sleep. The sky is slate gray again, and behind that flat curtain the sun heads for the horizon. Flurries begin to fall, and the woman holds out her hand from under the porch roof, reaching for them.

  Cohen watches her. She seems so far away.

  He hears the door open behind him, but he doesn’t turn. He’s worried about where things will go from here. It was a mistake not to call the police immediately.

  He’s on the edge of a precipice, looking down into unfathomable depths. He slides his hand down the cold glass and it makes a squeaking sound, so he puts both hands on the cold sill, still looking out over the city lit by gray light.

  “Hi, I’m Dr. Stevens,” a man says.

  Cohen turns around and looks across the long room. The doctor is younger than he expects, looks half
his age, and Cohen nearly cracks a joke about being at the hospital on a school day, then thinks better of it.

  “I’m Cohen,” he says quietly without moving from the window. “I’m his son.”

  “I’m Kaye,” his sister says, the two words rushing from her mouth so fast that she repeats them more slowly. “I’m Kaye. Kaye. The daughter.”

  “Kaye,” Dr. Stevens says, reaching out and shaking her hand. He walks over to Cohen and shakes his hand, nods his head solemnly. He glances down at Johnny sitting in the chair, appearing uncomfortable. He looks at Kaye and motions toward Cohen and the window. “Can we talk for a moment?”

  Kaye nods, and the two of them walk over, standing on either side of Cohen.

  “Have you heard anything about the . . . nature . . . of your father’s injuries?” The doctor speaks in a hushed voice.

  Both Kaye and Cohen shake their heads.

  “Mm-hmm,” the doctor says, staring out the window for a moment. The silence lasts so long that Cohen considers asking a question, but as he takes a breath to begin speaking, Dr. Stevens resumes. “I’m not sure how much the police would like me to say, but he is your father, and I’d like you to know the severity of . . . what happened. I see no good reason to keep it from you, and there are decisions you will need to make.”

  Again, silence. Kaye glances at Cohen nervously. He stares down at the tiled floor, noticing the flecks, the seemingly random patterns. He feels the cold air radiating from the glass behind him and thinks of the woman on the porch, reaching out to catch the snow.

  “Your father had a sharp instrument that pierced him here.” The doctor reaches up and with his index finger points under his jaw where it meets his neck. “The instrument was pushed up into his brain. It was perhaps a bit larger than the diameter of a chopstick, long and pointy.”

  Cohen nods slowly. “The trocar? That’s the only sharp instrument I can think of in the funeral home.”

  The doctor stares at Cohen for a moment, taking in the information.

  “It wasn’t some kind of knife? You’re sure?” Kaye asks.

  He does not remove his finger from that point on his jaw even as he continues. “There was also some embalming fluid injected at the site. Other toxic debris.”

  “Was it . . .” Kaye begins, but her voice fades.

  Dr. Stevens slowly lowers his finger. Cohen nearly laughs, the way some people might laugh when thrust into a terrible but also absurd situation. He turns away and stares out the window. He looks down at the street. The woman is gone.

  “Who would have done this to my dad?” Kaye whispers.

  The doctor continues without acknowledging her question. “We are doing everything we can, but the damage done by the . . .”

  “Trocar,” Cohen repeats in a flat voice.

  “The damage done by the trocar is severe. The fluid injected compounds the injury.” He takes a deep breath and tries to sound sympathetic. “I don’t expect your father to survive the night. We have made him as comfortable as possible.”

  Kaye makes a tiny sound like a hiccup or a chirp. She covers her mouth.

  The doctor starts to say something else, stops, and puts up both hands as if in surrender. “I really shouldn’t say anything else, not at this point. You can stay as long as you like. If you need anything, please let us know. There are blankets and pillows in the closet and the sofa folds out into a small, uncomfortable bed if you’d like to spend the night. But like I said, I don’t expect this to drag on for a long time.”

  Kaye makes the tiny sound again.

  Cohen nods. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Dr. Stevens backs away, turns, and walks quickly out the door. The room smells of antiseptic and something else that Cohen can’t quite identify. Toast? Soup? Kaye walks smoothly back to their father’s side and searches for his hand under the covers while holding her other hand over her mouth.

  Cohen turns to the window again. The sun is getting lower in the sky, dropping behind the taller buildings in the west. The streetlights came on while the doctor was speaking and now form neat, organized lines. The darker it becomes, the clearer Cohen’s own reflection in the glass is. What does he look like to someone down on the street, glancing up at the seventh-floor window? He wonders if they can see him, the sad, tired man.

  Kaye clears her throat and tries to speak. “Cohen, who could’ve . . .” But her voice is too heavy, and it folds in on itself and ends in silent weeping, the only evidence being the slight tremors in her shoulders.

  Cohen looks over at Johnny. He is staring at his mother, biting his lip, one of his legs swinging under the chair.

  “Hey, J,” Cohen says, beckoning with a movement of his head.

  Johnny stands and walks in moping fashion, his head bent down and swaying back and forth. He doesn’t lift his feet when he walks, sliding his cleats along the tile floor like ice skates.

  “Take off your shoes if they’re uncomfortable,” Cohen suggests, putting his arm around the boy. They both face their reflections in the window.

  “Nah. I’m okay.”

  “That snow was crazy, huh?”

  The boy nods, giving a slight smile.

  “When I was a kid, I never played baseball in the snow.” Cohen peers through the window, trying to see the sky. “Pretty dark out there,” he whispers. “But usually we can’t see the stars. Not here in the city.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s school?”

  “It’s alright, I guess.” But the boy clearly perks up, either because he likes school or because he craves a distraction from what’s going on around him.

  “Learn anything interesting?”

  He thinks for a moment, seeming to inquire silently of his reflection staring back at him in the window. It works, an idea is exchanged, and Johnny’s face brightens.

  “Do you know how fast light travels?” he asks Cohen.

  “How fast?”

  “One hundred eighty-six thousand miles. Per. Second.”

  Cohen looks down at the boy, whose fear and sadness have given way to amazement at this simple fact. Johnny’s eyes are wide open, eyebrows lifted. There must be nothing in the whole world as astonishing to the boy as this one fact.

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. In one second. And did you know the light we see from the stars left those stars thousands of years ago? We’re only seeing it now.”

  “That’s kind of a strange thing to think about.”

  “Yeah,” Johnny continues. “And some of those stars are dead but we still see their light. We won’t know they’re dead for another thousand years.”

  Cohen smiles down at Johnny. “You’re a smart kid,” he says. But a sadness transfers to him, perhaps at the word dead, perhaps at the idea of something being gone and no one knowing. Perhaps at the thought of that lonely light speeding through space, the last living part of a now-dead star.

  “You’re a smart kid,” Cohen says again. “Probably too smart for your own good.”

  Johnny laughs, pleased at himself, and stares up through the glass, hungrily searching for stars.

  ten

  The Sock

  The same spring Cohen met Ava, the same spring he took a baseball to the nose and leaked blood all over himself, he walked to his father’s church one day after school, as he sometimes did. He passed their house and kept on for another mile or so, arriving at the church to find the front door unlocked. It was a warm day but the metal was cold. He had to pull with both hands to budge the heavy door, and it made a loud latching sound behind him that echoed in the dim, empty foyer.

  There, the doors to the bathrooms. There, the place an usher always stood during the service. There, the double wooden doors that swung open into the sanctuary. The air smelled like pine mingled with the warm scent left behind by a recently used vacuum cleaner, one that had left angled lines in the bloodred carpet. The empty church filled him with a reverent, spooky kind of feeling, and he tried to breathe lightly.

  Cohen pulled
back the doors that led into the sanctuary and slipped in between them. They closed without a sound behind him. The air was still and warm. Light fell in stretched beams through the tall, narrow windows at the front of the sanctuary, and he walked forward, transfixed. The light seemed somehow solid, like gold bars. He moved silently down the center aisle, past each and every row, holding his breath in the stillness, all the way to the front where there was a rectangular wooden altar with words engraved on it.

  Do This in Remembrance of Me.

  There, the light fell all the way to the floor.

  Small specks of dust floated through the bars of light, and at first Cohen didn’t want to breathe for fear of blowing the holy light away. But then he leaned in close and blew gently, a breath of life, and the tiny dust planets swirled in and out of the light in circular patterns. Cohen smiled. The room was silent.

  But wait.

  There was one sound.

  What was that? It seemed to be off in the distance, something out of place. The dust planets swirled back on themselves in the void of moving air, rushing back at Cohen. But he didn’t notice them anymore. He didn’t move. He listened like a rabbit disturbed by distant sounds. Of what? Wind in the grass? A shadow? His eyes held steady before looking one way, then the other. He took one step back, away from the beam of light.

  He followed the sound to the left side of the church, about halfway back. He held out one hand at his side, grazing softly over each and every polished pew. They were made of oak, stained dark brown, and held swirls and patterns like fingerprints in the grain.

  It was a small, persistent sound. Air moved through a forgotten window, pushing the white drapes against the paneled walls. But the farther into the shadowy side of the church he went, the clearer the sound became. It was the sound of people. Whispering. Moving. He stopped when he saw the two pairs of feet stretching out from between two pews. One pair of feet wore his father’s shoes, the toes pointing down, and outside of them, toes pointed up, were the exquisitely painted, lime-green toenails of Miss Flynne.