The Beautiful Miscellaneous by Dominic Smith

Author:Dominic Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2007-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

twenty-nine

The weight of the news tortured me for a week before I told my father in early April 1988. Several times, after the talent show, I called home and almost told my mother. I knew she had a right to know. But each time I heard her recount the domestic dramas of life with my father—his hallway wanderings in the small hours, the surges of discordant jazz from his study, the way he drank milk straight from the carton—I knew this had to be done in person. And I felt like I owed it to my father to be the one to tell him.

Just before Easter my parents and Whit took Teresa and me to Des Moines to a new planetarium that had just opened. We drove an hour to sit under a domed ceiling and watch planets and stars angle across our universe. Whit called it “a chapel beneath the stars,” as he chauffeured us along I-80. The outing had been his idea. I sat up front with him while my parents sat with Teresa between them in back. I heard them exchange comments about vacation plans and the unseasonably cold weather. Teresa was flying to Chicago that night to be with her family.

We arrived midafternoon in downtown Des Moines. The sky was cloud-capped, an expanse of bleached gray. We drove past storefronts decorated for Easter—an appliance store with baskets lining the window, a Mexican restaurant with festive lights blinking. Some families were out window-shopping in front of a department store. Whit honked and waved at them as we waited at a stoplight. One of the fathers waved back heartily. We drove in circles trying to find the planetarium. Whit assured us that he’d called ahead, that it was definitely a going concern.

Eventually we parked in front of a Methodist church. Catty-corner stood the planetarium. It was housed in an old brick theater whose roof had been replaced with an aluminum dome. A metal bubble set between 1920s office buildings made for a strange sight. We bought our tickets at an old-fashioned booth and were ushered inside. It was moderately busy, mostly families with younger kids. There was a concession stand with popcorn. Teresa and I stared at each other. It was the perfect outing for seven-year-olds. Whit stood in line and bought two buckets of popcorn. When he returned he handed a bucket to Teresa and said, “I hear they show the Big Bang. That’s got to be a popcorn occasion, don’t you think?” He went and stood with my father. Teresa came toward me, out of earshot of my parents. “Your parents were putting me to sleep in the car,” she said. Normally I would have found this comment funny, might have offered a rejoinder about Whit’s conversational habits, but today I found it callous. I suspected that people didn’t exist for Teresa once she had named their maladies; they were reduced to damp lungs and spackled organs in Tulsa and Jersey City. I took a handful of popcorn and turned away.

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