Every August, I pack up my old telescope and take the ferry out to Toronto Island to watch the Perseid meteor shower from the beach on Gibraltar Point. I’m astonished by how few people in the city are aware of the galactic grand opera whirling over their heads.
I’ve always wanted to watch it far from the light pollution of the city, somewhere the nights are so dark it’s like being in outer space. That’s why I agree to Darren’s proposal of a week of stargazing on Lake Superior.
We discuss whether to use his all-weather tent or borrow his buddy’s nineteen-foot RV. I vote for the RV. I want a comfortable bed.
“For a wannabe astronaut, you’re not much for roughing it, are you?” says Darren.
“In space, you’re weightless. Here on Earth, I’ve got to consider my back,” I answer.
The RV is a minnow compared to the bloated whale motorhomes chugging along the highway. The cozy, cramped interior reminds me of a spacecraft. Darren’s pots and pans and bottles of Campari, vermouth and red wine are neatly stowed in cunningly designed cubbies. It’s kitted out with a tiny bathroom and kitchen and a bed that slides out from under the bench seat at the back when you press a button. It has hot and cold running water, a tiny pedal-operated flush toilet, sink, stove, fridge, microwave and speakers at the back where Darren plans to seduce me to the complete works of Vivaldi, AC/DC, the Allman Brothers and Holst’s The Planets.
“I’ll bet we have more space than they had on any of the Gemini missions. Impressive how they’ve made use of every scrap of space.”
“We have a better on-board bar than the astronauts did,” Darren tells me. “Did you not notice the split of champagne in the fridge? Tell me Neil Armstrong had anything like that to look forward to at the end of the lunar day.”
To mark the occasion, he presents me with a set of silk sheets printed with pornographic images of the signs of the Zodiac.
“If this van’s rockin’, don’t bother knockin’,” he tells me with a grin.
The drive to Lake Superior is long, a full day and a half, but when we arrive, the view from our campsite alone is worth the trip: hard against a narrow rocky beach that lets out onto the endless expanse of the greatest of the Great Lakes, grey waves pound so close to us that I tell Darren to forget the AC/DC so we can listen to the sounds of the wind and water.
Darren drags a 30-amp electrical cord to an outdoor outlet that keeps our life-support systems functioning. We take our espresso out to the picnic table to enjoy the already-crisp air — “Summer ends a lot earlier up here than in Toronto,” the other campers tell us — and build a fire to warm up for the meteor shower, which gets going around ten p.m.
Unlike in outer space, when you’re stargazing from Earth, you have to contend with climate and weather. A storm front had trailed us north, socking in the night sky with cloud cover. A park ranger drops by our site and says, “You guys are here for the meteor shower, right? Conditions should be perfect by tomorrow night. It’ll be a chilly one though, so dress warm.”
We sleep in the next morning, preparing ourselves to stay up late and watch the sky. As we wait for darkness to fall, I go for a run. The slap, slap, slap of my trainers on the paved road between stands of trees out of a Group of Seven painting boosts my endorphins, helping me achieve the so-called runner’s high. Three motorcycles roll up, revving their engines, as I approach the camp store. Predictably, two of the bikes are Harley-Davidsons, one black, one cherry red. I am surprised to see that the third is a white Kawasaki with Massachusetts plates.
Jogging in place, I watch the two Harley men dismount and pull off their helmets before going into the store, leaving the third rider to keep an eye on the bikes. Still astride his Kawasaki, he pulls off his helmet. He looks like a typical road warrior, likely in his sixties, his grey hair pulled into a ponytail. The skin on his face is pink and peeling, as if he has a skin disease. Eczema, probably.
No, not eczema. Sunburn.
I stop mid-stride. The shock of recognition takes my breath away. I stagger to a bench next to the camp store, sit down and put my head between my knees.
“Are you okay? Can I get you a drink?”
I nod without lifting my head. I already know it’s the sunburned biker talking to me. His breath smells like cinnamon chewing gum.
I hear coins being pushed into the drinks machine and look up to see him twisting the cap off a Gatorade as he walks back to me. Even the decisive, cocky strut is familiar. He hands me the bottle and I take a sip. He sits down beside me, looking at my face with concern.
I finally catch my breath. “I won’t go with you.”
He frowns. “Excuse me?”
I see nothing in his eyes that signals recognition. He doesn’t know who I am.
“You’re not diabetic, are you?” he asks.
“No, I just — sorry. Thought I knew you.”
He makes a sound, halfway between a grunt and a laugh. “You thought you recognized me and felt faint? Should I take that as a compliment?”
“I mean, I thought I knew your face. It’s all sunburned.”
“That’s windburn from riding in this weather. Look, are you here with someone? Maybe I should find them for you.”
I shake my head. “I’m fine now. Really.”
“Sure?”
I nod. “I’ll walk back to my campsite. Thanks again for the help and have a good trip.”
“You too. Take good care now,” he says, and stands up, leathers creaking.
As he opens the screen door of the camp store, he smiles at me, his teeth white and straight in that red, ravaged face.
I lift my hand to wave my thanks. In return, he shoots me a peace sign and enters the store. His ring finger is missing above the knuckle.
It has to be Duff. Or, at least, the Earth Standard Time version of Duff. Which would explain why he doesn’t remember me. Wouldn’t be the first time I met someone from my non-existent past.
Despite what Sputnik Chick says, sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.
Slowly, I jog back to the campsite. In the distance, Darren swings an axe, splitting kindling for the fire, his wheat-coloured hair flopping into his eyes. When I run up to him, he sets the axe carefully on the picnic table and leans down for a kiss. I oblige him but he pulls back and frowns. “You okay? You look pale.”
“A little dehydrated. I’m going to drink some juice and hit the showers.”
That night, Darren and I join a crowd of campers on the beach to watch the meteor shower. The air is clear and cold and we lie on blankets on top of the gritty sand, staring straight up at the avalanche of shooting stars. I point out Orion the hunter and Cassiopeia the seated woman, Aries the Greek god of war and all the other familiar constellations. I connect the dots between stars to reveal images of gods and goddesses, real and mythological animals and ancient symbols like Libra’s scales of justice. My sign. The Milky Way spills itself over the western half of the sky, cracking open the edge of our galaxy to let us peek into countless others.
Later, curled beside Darren in the back of the RV, I wake in the middle of the night. Despite the large body beside me, I’m freezing. I also have a killer headache.
Tylenol, I tell myself, but when I try to wiggle to the end of the bed that fills the back of the van, I find that I can’t move. My head is strapped to a board.
Can’t talk, either: my jaws are clamped shut. I suddenly become aware of metal screws that have been driven into my cheeks, Frankenstein-style. The only parts of me that can move are my eyes. Two faces in scrub masks look down at me. Mom and Dad. Mom’s eyes are leaking. Dad pulls a sheet over my face. I try to scream but can’t make a sound. The world goes white.
I wake to Darren shaking me. “You were having a nightmare.”
This is the only good part of my recurring dream: waking up. Especially with someone there to comfort me.
“What was it about?”
I curl up into him. “I’m on an operating table. My parents are there. They think I’m dead. I keep telling them I’m alive, but they can’t hear me.”
Darren adjusts his position so that one arm drapes protectively over me. His face is warm and reassuring against the crook of my neck.
“I have a dream like that sometimes. I walk into a cave and meet this monster. Turns out he’s my real father.”
Coldness settles over me. As if I’m back in the dream. “What do you mean by your real father?”
Darren scoops me closer. He’s good at comforting me. It’s funny how so many things about him seem safe and familiar — even little mannerisms that on some level I realize remind me of Dad.
And a very little bit, I think with shame, of the Shark. His hands. The complexion. Something about the shape of his jaw. Sturdy handsomeness, absent the cruelty.
“I was adopted,” he says.
Darren tells me what he knows. He was born somewhere in Southern Ontario. June 1970. Mom, an unmarried teenager. He says he’s been trying to find her through an agency that helps adoptees find their birth parents. So far, she’s refused contact.
“What about your father?”
Darren yawns. “His name was left off my birth records. Not a good sign. It means my mother either didn’t want to identify him or didn’t know who he was. I’ve never had a good feeling about who he might be. Only piece of information my adoptive parents got was that I might’ve inherited a weird blood anomaly,” says Darren.
I sit up. In the world of Sputnik Chick — correction, in my world — there are no coincidences. “What kind of anomaly?”
He yawns and stretches. “Some kind of allergy to surgical drugs. I’ve never been under, so I’ve never had to dig into it. Anyway, it’s rare.”
“Pseudocholinesterase deficiency,” I suggest.
He rubs his eyes. “Maybe. Only time it comes up is when I go to the dentist. He always knocks me out with gas instead of giving me a shot of novocaine.”
When Darren finally falls asleep, I get up and dress in hiking gear, the warmest I can find, then step outside to watch the wheel of stars above me. Meteors are still falling. They must be laughing at me. I have fallen in love with my sister’s lost son, and I have only myself to blame.
One tragedy averted, a thousand others rushing in to take its place.
The next morning at dawn, before Darren is awake, I slip into a sweatshirt and jeans, pack a bag, fold up my telescope and walk out of the campground to the highway. In the morning mist, a big rig approaches and I stick out my thumb.
The trucker takes me as far as the Little Finlandia Hotel, just north of Lake Superior Park. From the front desk, I phone the co-op store in Wawa and ask them to deliver a drafting table.
Time to pick up the dropped threads of Sputnik Chick’s origin story.
I get back to work.