Page 39 of To the Moon and Back
STEPH SURPRISE
Two Months Earlier
In September, before homecoming and what I said to Della and the birth of my niece Felicia Palakiko, I turned twenty-one years old. I had never had a happier birthday. When I was lonely, later on, I would torture myself with memories of it.
Della threw me a surprise party. The theme she chose was Columbia , because the shuttle’s upcoming mission would be in January and I’d been counting down to it for months.
I had memorized the names of the seven astronauts, where they were from, and what they had done to make it this far.
I knew where they’d gone to college and grad school.
I knew the names of their children, and how old they were.
That last part was what Della called “going too far.”
I sat beside her on our bed, textbooks still in my arms, and looked around.
Planets hastily drawn on notebook paper, taped to the walls.
Rockets made of toilet paper rolls, swinging from the ceiling at the ends of mint-green floss.
Captioned images of the Crab Nebula and the recently discovered black hole MACHO-96-BLG-5, printed in black and white, hanging from the posts at the foot of our bed.
There were posters of the Columbia shuttle—hand-drawn by my sister.
My desk was littered with candy. Milky Ways and Mars Bars and Galaxy Bars and gum—Eclipse and Orbit.
I could picture Della standing on a chair, ripping tape from the roll with her front teeth. Cursing at the printer for turning colorful star systems into gray-and-black squares.
Della, like most people, didn’t care about Columbia . What set her apart was, at best, her extraordinary thoughtfulness. At worst, how she could quietly fold her life into the envelope of another person.
Della cleared her throat. Everyone jumped out of their hiding places and sang. We did shots.
Della held a bite of cake in her hand for me, and when Sam turned around to pour more shots, I sucked the icing off her fingers. She looked at me like I was in trouble and then laughed.
Nobody but me knew anything about Columbia , but they were kind and drunk and happy to play along.
They appreciated a weird party theme, like when the Sigma Chis filled their basement with foam or the Sigma Nus filled their basement with sand.
Della put the names of five experiments planned for the mission in a hat, and made everyone guess them through charades.
If they got them wrong, everyone had to drink.
Della asked me trivia questions about the shuttle’s previous missions, and if I got them right, everyone had to drink.
Della taped the names of the seven astronauts on our foreheads and had us walk around and ask questions to figure out which one we were.
Everybody lost. I won! Della put a blindfold on me in front of a map of the US, spun me around, kissed the back of my neck, and said to pin the shuttle on the launchpad.
On our fifth round of shots, Sandra announced her candidacy as Della’s maid of honor when we eventually got married, and Sam said no way, she’d be having a best man, and the two of them fought over this even though gay marriage was illegal and also, it was my birthday not hers.
But I wasn’t jealous. Finally, I really wasn’t. Everyone loved Della, and why wouldn’t they? I couldn’t believe she loved me back.
That night, when everyone had left, we had sex in a way we hadn’t before.
I didn’t know what to say, how to let her know what I was feeling.
I was only myself, which was something very small and uncertain.
I didn’t want to pretend I was more experienced than her, like I was in any position to tell her what to do.
Did she know how desperately I now needed her?
How terrible it was to realize that, to be both weak and lucky in that way.
In my quiet, Della heard me. She rolled over and moved over me, slowly, cradling my face.
Shushing me in comfort when I had said nothing, when I stayed very still and looked up at her in awe.
When I spoke, finally, I said I wanted only to be close.
She nodded and told me she loved me. She held me and asked me no questions, and together we fell asleep.
On the night Felicia was born, Della was at the president’s gate. Then she was at the hospital with Jason and Kayla, holding her hand through rushed stages of labor. My mother was in her car, driving through the night from Oklahoma. I was in the library, trying to read in Russian.
In the early morning Sandra found me there and berated me all the way to the hospital.
I walked into the postpartum recovery room and Della was there, her eyes red, holding the smallest baby in a striped blanket.
She moved to pass the baby back to Kayla, twisting at the waist, the two women meeting each other in the middle to support the baby’s head and neck.
Then she hurried past me, into the hallway.
The email Della sent later that day said she was breaking up with me. It wasn’t because of what I’d said at the meeting, though that had been unkind.
Della said she’d seen my niece be born into the world, and she wanted that. She wanted that someday, with a person she could trust. She loved me, but she didn’t trust me. It was over.