Lost and Wanted(24)

14.


I had suggested we get the kids together. I’d done it because I didn’t know what to say to Terrence after the service, but I hadn’t expected him to agree. I didn’t think he considered me a good enough friend, maybe even of his wife’s, to want to talk to me about her now, and I couldn’t imagine what use Simmi would have for a new playmate, especially a shy younger boy, just after her mother’s death.

But Terrence had taken my number at the memorial, and texted me two weeks later to arrange it. He and Simmi showed up on a Sunday morning at exactly the appointed time. We half hugged at the door, and then I led them into the living room, where the four of us stood in uncomfortable silence. Or rather, the three of us; only Jack was perfectly content, watching Simmi. Recent events, not to mention her age and costume (she arrived in leopard-print tights and a tank top with a sequined star on it), clearly fascinated him. Terrence was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt that said Zingaro in fancy black script. The clothing made him more recognizably himself, but the change from the man I remembered was still striking, perhaps only because of his close-cropped hair. It made his face less boyishly handsome, more angular and dramatic. There was a tattoo I couldn’t make out on the inside of his left arm.

I suggested that Jack show Simmi his room, but Simmi sat down cross-legged on the floor and started looking at an old issue of the MIT Technology Review. There couldn’t have been anything there to interest her, but she turned the pages systematically, as if it were a hurdle she had to cross before moving on to whatever business was at hand.

“Simmi,” her father said, and Simmi looked up, but at me rather than him. Her hair was secured in two very neat French braids; it seemed like an unlikely skill for a father to have, and I wondered if Addie had done it. Simmi’s features, like Charlie’s, were perfectly regular, but her face was wider, heart-shaped like Terrence’s.

“Are you an astronomer?” she asked, her eyes on me.

    “No. But I do use data—information—that astronomers and astrophysicists collect.”

“So you study stars?”

“Not usually.”

“What do you study?”

“It’s a little hard to explain, but I mostly study forces. Like the way the very smallest things we know about move around, and also the very biggest things, like stars and planets.”

Simmi looked impatient, as if I were intentionally being difficult. “So you know what stars are like.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think you could say that.”

“Is there, like—” She slapped our hardwood floor twice with the palm of her hand: “ground?” Her face had an intensity that made me uncomfortable. Terrence had been frowning out the window, but now he gave me a kind of warning look.

I thought Simmi noticed that and was trying to keep all my attention on her.

“No,” I said carefully. “A star is just a hot ball of gas.”

“Because of the nuclear fusion reactions in its core!” Jack was showing off for our guests, but Simmi ignored him.

“Isn’t it too hot for people on stars?” she asked.

“You’re right, it’s much too hot. In the middle there’s hydrogen—that’s one of the two ingredients in water—and helium, like what’s inside balloons. The tiny pieces of hydrogen crash together to make helium, along with light and heat. Some of the stars we’re looking at are so far away that the light we’re seeing is thousands or even millions of years old.”

“The speed of light is the fastest thing in the universe!” Jack said. “Faster than Power Rangers!”

“It’s like a fire pit,” Simmi said. “Like hell.”

“No, it isn’t,” Terrence said firmly.

“There’s no hell,” Jack said.

Simmi focused on him for the first time. “How do you know?”

“He’s right, baby,” Terrence said. “Everybody knows that.”

I could see the next question on Simmi’s face, the obvious one that I wondered myself as a child, when I’d heard my own grandmother talk about meeting her parents in heaven—how could there be one and not the other?

    “Most astronomers do think there are other solar systems like ours out there,” I said. “Maybe even with planets like Earth. They could just be too far for us to get to.”

But Simmi had turned back to the magazine, examining a glossy and somewhat frightening portrait of Elon Musk standing in an empty airplane hangar, leaning on one of his cars.

Jack had also lost interest in cosmology and was shifting from one foot to the other. “Do you want to see my room?”

I could tell Simmi wanted to say no, but her father accepted for her.

“Go on, Sims.”

Simmi uncrossed her legs and stood up reluctantly.

“Do you like Legos?” Jack asked eagerly.

“Not really.” But her tone was truthful rather than harsh. “My best friend in L.A. is Piper,” we heard her say as they walked down the hall. “She’s nine already.”

“My cousin is nine,” Jack said gamely. Then they went into his room, and shut the door.

I looked at Terrence. “I’m not sure I did the best job answering that one.”