Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

“See that you do,” said Irene. “She was my mother. She was not just some box of dust that you don’t know what to do with. She was all I had.”

She slammed the phone back into the receiver and turned around to find that Sam Beth was looking at her with her mouth hanging open.

“What happened?” said Sam Beth.

“I stole my mother’s body from the funeral home,” said Irene. “Her burned up, postcremation body. And now they can’t find her, and I am blaming them for losing her.”

“Wow,” said Sam Beth, seeming to be genuinely impressed. “What are you going to do with her?”

“That’s the thing,” said Irene. “I don’t know. I can’t just randomly plant her in some flower garden.”

Sam Beth narrowed her eyes and blew air out gently between her lips. She inflated her lips in this way, tapping one finger gently on the desk.

“I know what to do,” said Sam Beth. “There is a ceremony that the Daughters of Babylon can perform. I think I can help you.”

“You would do that?” said Irene.

“When you just stood there and said you stole your mother’s ashes from the funeral home, my opinion of you kind of changed. I mean, I still don’t think you’re right for Dr. Dermont. But I think what you did was pretty badass.”

It was summertime, 1986. Bernice and Sally had planted a flower garden, trying to attract as many hummingbirds as possible to their kitchen window, because the two-year-old George and Irene found them so interesting. They planted phlox, bee balm, tried to get a trumpet vine to riot over an arbor installed by Ray and Dean. The two men had stayed friends, in spite of the situation, and they often did projects around the house together, Ray coming in to visit for a few days or taking Dean off hunting in Michigan in the fall. Bernice avoided him when he was around, but came to grudgingly appreciate his continued interest in Irene. He was a wild character, but they had underestimated him.

Of course he later became a felon and a gambler, but this was still the golden summer when they were all together, and Bernice could pretend it would always be this way. The babies would sit in their high chairs, side by side, and eat their breakfast watching little birds hover over the flowers while the women drank tea, Bernice resting between sessions, Sally serving up applesauce, scrambled eggs, peach slices, and ripe tomatoes to the kids.

“We need to separate them soon,” Sally said one morning.

“You said when they’re three,” said Bernice, her hands around a mug of tea. They had been making applesauce and had kerchiefs on their heads.

“I said when they’re verbal,” Sally corrected. She used a rag to wipe off the counter and replaced George’s spoon with a new one from the drawer.

“Does it really matter?” Out of habit, she loosed the tea from the tea ball and swirled the contents around in the remaining liquid, then upended the cup on the saucer.

“Yes, it matters,” said Sally. “We don’t want them to be like cousins. We want them to meet as adults. Don’t be weird. If they know each other too well, they can’t fall in love.”

Bernice slowly turned the teacup back over and peered inside.

“What is it?” asked Sally.

“You’re not the one that’s got to move out,” said Bernice. “And lose her job.”

“Yeah, you’re not the one who’s going to have to get a job. Without you here, there’s no astrology practice—it’s just smoke and mirrors.”

“I’m smoke and mirrors,” said Bernice. In the cup: a whirlwind, a broken chain. Sometimes there was a bell, a bridge.

“You’re not smoke and mirrors,” said Sally. “You have real talent, whatever your personal feelings about it are. I’ve seen you predict stuff, like spooky accurate.”

“It’s all science,” said Bernice. “You know that. Charts, lists, books, technique. The fact that it happens to work has nothing to do with me, any more than the fact that you’re affected by gravity has anything to do with you.”

“What’s in the teacup?” said Sally. “Is it more plane crash?”

“No,” said Bernice. “I mean, yes, but it means nothing.”

Sally pulled a large ceramic bowl out of the sink and set it on the kitchen island. She began to hum as she wiped it with her towel.

Irene said, “All done,” and Sally swept her tray clean with the rag and replaced the food with some paper crayons for her to play with.

“Can’t get down yet, darling,” she said. “Mama’s still resting, and I’m going to finish putting away the dishes we made the applesauce in. Then I’ll take you outside. If only Uncle Dean would get back, he could take you kids for a while and let us finish.”

Then Dean came through the door, pulling his flannel coat from his shoulders, “Hello, family!”

Bernice saw Sally’s mouth drop open, her head jerk up. Her eyes met Bernice’s eyes. “Wait, this is that moment. Applesauce,” she said. “From our own orchard. It’s happening. And here he is. It’s him. He’s about to do it.”

“What, me?” Dean asked. “Brave, handsome me?”

Dean turned and swung his arms out wide, and the bowl, knocked off the counter, fell toward the ground. But Bernice was already there, standing, and caught it before it shattered on the floor.

“Yeah, right,” said Sally. “You’re smoke and mirrors. You don’t know anything. But you predicted this moment, ten years ago. Down to the pot in your hands. And you know it.”

Irene laughed in her high chair. George threw a tomato. Both the women turned then and looked straight at the children in their high chairs. George was holding Irene’s hand.

Maybe Bernice did not realize that the moment of separation would ever come. Maybe she thought she could keep on tossing herself onto the sofa next to Sally, pulling her friend’s head into her lap, or brushing Sally’s long hair while she was on the telephone. “Oh, that feels good,” Sally would say, hanging up. “It gives me goose bumps. Don’t stop.” Maybe Bernice imagined she would keep on hugging her behind the stove, rubbing her temples with arnica, doing her toenails and laughing. Never mind that she would fall into the arms of Dean, say “Hey, baby,” and kiss him. Never mind that she would fall so eagerly into his bed, laughing into the night. Shitty as it was being third wheel, Bernice could go on forever.

But after that day in the kitchen, with the bowl that dropped and the children holding hands in their chairs, Sally seemed to never stop lecturing that they must raise the children separately to be compatible, so that they could find each other, so that familiarity would not breed contempt. They would train them independently to be magnets, north and south, that would click together when they met, years later, at the appointed time. Maybe Bernice had forgotten this part of the deal, in her happiness. Dean was gone from their lives so much, either in the studio or traveling, that it was almost like old times. Sometimes the mothers even slept together in the same bed. For Bernice, ignoring the possibility that they’d separate the children also meant turning her back on the idea that they’d separate from each other. Yet that’s exactly what Sally had in mind.

They finally decided Bernice would leave on the children’s third birthday. She would live in her old house in the East End, she would continue to work as a tasseomancer, an astrologer, a psychic, and Sally would get a job to supplement Dean’s erratic income. The bags were packed and moved bit by bit, the furniture at the old house dusted and prepared, the utilities restored, and they were leaving. They had let the babies fall asleep in the same bed one last time, and Bernice was to leave as soon as they were truly sleeping, so there would be no sad good-bye to remember, only something sweet. Bernice sat on the bench near the door, hesitating to go and get her sleeping daughter, hesitating to leave her friend.