Page 44 of To the Moon and Back

STEPH I HAVE LOVED THE STARS TOO FONDLY

On the day after the Columbia shuttle disaster, I left the house in the dark. I moved slowly, careful not to wake Della.

In the library, a custodian waxed the floors.

I emailed my thesis adviser about the Fulbright research grant application cycle.

I said I appreciated how he had said, many times, that a relatively isolated year in Russia seemed “unwise” for my mental health.

And that he didn’t believe I was ready for it, scholastically speaking.

But, I said, heads-up! I’d be doing it anyway. I would apply in the fall of senior year, and hope to leave the country after graduation. If Della hadn’t left me by then, maybe she’d come along.

Through the window beside my row of computers, I stole glances at the sunrise.

I registered for scuba diving lessons held in the pool of the campus rec center.

I signed up for a weight-lifting PE class three afternoons a week, and another class (daily, at five a.m.) called Kardio Konditioning.

I read one article titled “Alcohol’s Effects on Physical Fitness” and decided I’d never drink again.

I emailed a nearby flight school and asked about pricing for the fall.

I would get my scuba license. My pilot license.

My skydiving license. I would get a Fulbright research grant.

I would get abs. All this I could manage before or during grad school, ten or more years from when I’d need it in astronaut training.

All this would terrify me, would push me, would tie me more tightly to the life I’d chosen.

I should have stayed in bed with Della. Or, if not, I should have returned from the library with coffee. Two croissants in a box tied with a string. Hadn’t she given herself back to me when I most needed her? Hadn’t she asked for nothing in return?

But when I came home—three hours later, croissant-less—Della would only smile, and say she had missed me.

I thought often about death. Shuttles exploding, asteroids crashing, astronauts with broken tethers running slowly out of air. Astronauts, floating alone through space.

I told myself, Della is back. A miracle. Della loves me.

In bed, we stopped pretending I knew anything. Della took care of us both. Her voice and hands were careful, like I’d break.

But when I slept, after, I saw astronauts. The seven of them, waving and smiling at the crowd. Stepping into the shuttle and closing the door.

I saw my mother one day, alone. Standing at the kitchen window in that small house, in that small town. My mother, who’d lost her parents, her husband, Brett, and maybe someday me? I had to act under the knowledge that this could happen.

I knew what could have been. I imagined myself a high school science teacher, like Brett; Brett who’d made a difference in my life and in that of many others.

I imagined Della as a scientist, or a teacher at my same school.

Tahlequah. Babies who looked like Della.

Holiday-themed sugar cookies. Summer camp programs in music or theater or something else, whatever pulled at our children like the stars had once pulled at me.

After Columbia I realized: It was a tugging that would never stop.

I was forever at the end of a rope, tied to a world too far from my own, and I could cry and scream and mourn the shuttle loss, the loss of good people and good science, and I could be afraid of it, too, so afraid I’d wake up sweating and shaking in the middle of the night from dreams of sirens and fire and rocketing toward the Earth—Della above me, shaking my shoulders, telling me it’s fine, you’re here, you’re only here.

But I wouldn’t take comfort in that. I worried I would never take comfort in my belonging—finally—to and with another person.

Over the next year of loving Della, I came to know how fiercely she held on to people.

She was willing to wait for me, anywhere, even on a runway in a van full of terrified children. And I was willing to die.