Page 50 of To the Moon and Back

STEPH WE SEE WE ARE WALKING ON BONES

Christmas in Italy was Kayla’s idea. She wanted to pick up the whole family, our mother included, and drop them outside my lab on a volcano. “It’ll be fun!” she said. But Christmas in Italy was still six days away, and my sister already hated it.

I blamed the internet. Ever since Kayla’s first #indigenouswomentravel post, the photo of her fluffy socks peeking out of moccasins as she boarded Alitalia Airways, the comments had been flying in.

#RICHindigenouswomentravel, must be nice to spend Christmas in Italy, have you ever even taken your kid to the rez , etc.

Another possibility was that Jason—I suspected, but also it was obvious—thought Kayla’s whole platform was lame. So what if it was lame, I thought. You married her! You have to click “heart” under all her little posts!

I did. Our mother did. Even Felicia did, and she had to do chores to earn coupons for time online.

After the family photo in Pompeii, when our mother was struggling to catch her breath from the steep walk while also asking Kayla if something seemed “a little off with Felicia lately,” Jason asked Kayla—weirdly calm, his hand in her hair—not to post the photo on Facebook.

Why? In case a client saw it. His clients, every one of them mid-divorce, got sad and needy over the holidays.

They texted him more than usual, and what was usual was already too much.

Not posting a family vacation photo was a big ask for a mommy blogger (my term, not hers). But also, Kayla had migrated from Facebook to Instagram in 2012! I said, “Mom, what are you talking about? Felicia is fine!” and Kayla said, “Hold up, babe, do you even follow me?”

Kayla and Jason fought, gripping each other’s hands as they stomped through the halls of the archaeological museum.

They fought with hushed voices and long, respectful bouts of listening.

It looked exhausting. Jason had gone into divorce litigation for the money and the interesting drama, but now he was terrified of conflict.

My mother took me and Felicia down the street for gelato. On our return to the museum, they were still fighting. (Jason called it “hearing each other.”)

My mother looked at me, worry clear on her face.

I put my arm around Felicia and guided her to the outdoor section of the museum, the aftermath of the eruption.

Felicia loved it—even the bodies of two people embracing as they burned alive—until she saw the dog.

I had forgotten about the dog. Like the people it was dead, kind of mummified by the casting of the ash.

It was in the position it had died in two thousand years ago, on its back with its mouth wide open.

Felicia screamed. My mother held Felicia’s face to her belly and rocked back and forth, a babying move which made Felicia scream louder. Kayla and Jason came running out of the museum, still holding hands.

“Steph, what the hell, you took her to see the dog ?” Kayla said.

“How do you even know about the dog?” I said.

“I read about every place I take her before we go! We skipped the dog intentionally !”

In what world, I thought, had Kayla led the family on some preplanned tour of the museum? We had gotten gelato without her.

“Mom, I’m too old for you to be screening stuff for me,” Felicia said, suddenly composed. “I can choose for myself.”

Kayla smiled, one eyebrow raised. There was no way, I thought, she’d give her twelve-year-old choices. She let go of Jason, took Felicia by the hand, and dragged her to the exit.

The restaurant walls were a faded yellow, the tables a scratched, honey-colored wood. My mother laid her napkin out flat and put her plate and silverware on top of it—a weird, makeshift tablecloth.

Crowded around tables in mismatched chairs were mostly older men—drinking and laughing, and bent over large plates of ham and shellfish. The whole room seemed to be served by one woman. I realized, as she pulled out her notepad to take our orders, that we had had sex.

The woman had long brown hair and wore a short, black apron tight around her waist. She stood with one hip jutted to the side and looked at me, unfazed.

“My daughter will have spaghetti, please,” Kayla said. “No sauce.”

The server nodded, still looking at me. Was she remembering it, too? Months ago. A dating app, a bar, a cramped apartment with roommates over a restaurant. This restaurant? Her hand on my cheek, too intimate. She was in school for something, maybe nursing.

“I can order for myself,” Felicia said. “Spaghetti, please! But no sauce.”

Dinner had been Jason’s idea. Diffusing tension was always Jason’s idea.

Kayla had told our mother and me, in a weirdly braggy way on the first night of the trip, that every January Jason scheduled them quarterly sessions with a marriage counselor.

“Just to check in.” When they argued, Kayla said, they had this elaborate process of listening to each other’s feelings, stating them back to each other, asking questions “from a place of curiosity,” and holding hands.

One of the questions was, “When I did _____, and you felt _____, did that remind you of anything from your childhood?”

When I heard that, I said that for some people remembering childhood must be better in theory than in practice. Our mother laughed and laughed, choosing to be part of the joke and not the butt of it.

Earlier, in line for a taxi outside the airport when they’d arrived, Kayla had pulled me aside. She said she’d started searching for information about our father.

I tensed. Had she found something? Did our mother know she was looking?

“Nothing yet,” she whispered.

Relief.

“That’s insane, and I want no part in it,” I’d said. “You should give up. He died before people put stuff on the internet.”

“Don’t you want to know his whole deal? We’re missing basic facts about who he was. Mom won’t even talk about the accident that killed him!”

“If you find anything,” I said, “don’t tell me.”

Kayla glared at me, and the taxi arrived.

At the restaurant, our mother asked, “Do they have gelato here?” She was smiling, resting her elbow on top of Felicia’s head.

“Elisi, we had gelato before dinner!” Felicia said, batting her arm away and laughing. Felicia was the first Harper in who knows how long to use the Cherokee word for grandma, though she didn’t know to conjugate its possessive. She called Jason’s mother “Tutu,” in Hawaiian.

“Steph,” Kayla said, “how’s the rest of your night looking? Think you’ll be free after this?”

I turned to the server. She yelled good-naturedly at an old man in the corner. He was calling her over in Italian: girl girl girl girl.

“Una bottiglia di acqua, insalata e pesce,” I said.

“You’ve sure been practicing,” our mother said. She meant, I thought, something like you’ve sure stopped caring about indigenous language revitalization ; or, I bet all your Cherokee is gone!

It mostly was. I ignored her. She ordered fettuccine alfredo.

The server nodded slowly at the touristy request, and I suspected she’d bring my mother noodles with a pat of butter. She turned to me. “I’ll be back to take care of you.” She moved her eyes slowly down my body. When she left, Jason was watching me, smiling and shaking his head.

“ Well, Auntie Steph ,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I sure hope you’re enjoying yourself in Italy.”

“I do all right.” I gave my shoulder a little brush.

“Steph,” Kayla said again, “let’s go for a drink tonight. After Jason gets everyone settled at the hotel?”

“I can get myself settled,” our mother said. “Don’t mind me!”

“Me too,” Felicia said, not looking up. “I’ve been working my way up to brushing my own teeth.” The server had clocked her as much younger than twelve, handing her a pack of crayons and a coloring sheet when we’d sat down. Instead of taking offense, Felicia quietly shaded in a small elephant.

“It’s a bad night for me,” I said. “I’ll be up at four a.m. I’ve gotta get my workout in before I help prep for the volcano drill, and then make it down to your hotel for breakfast.”

“Steph, please,” Kayla said.

“Plus, I haven’t had a drink since like, 2003?”

Kayla sighed. “I haven’t been invited to come visit you since you-know-when. I’m sorry if I’m not up to date.”

“Wait, since when?” Felicia asked. “I don’t know when!”

The adults ignored her. After recovering back in grad school from what I called “a bad breakup,” I was embarrassed at how weak I’d been. Many things worse than a bad breakup could happen in the world, and I had not proven myself ready for them.

Also, I had a reputation to save. I went full force on the PhD.

(The two PhDs, in astronomy and geology, which had been almost impossible to convince my adviser to let me do.

She’d tried very hard to mentor me, but said I was stubborn and impatient.) I had no real relationships and saw no family or friends.

I had my work, my physical fitness, and sometimes sex.

After graduation I won a fellowship in Japan and then this, a fellowship in Italy.

It was only this fall, when NASA finally put out a new call for astronaut candidate applications and I finally clicked “submit,” that I’d told Kayla she could come see me.

I would have jumped at the chance to spend time alone with her.

Just the two of us, like old times. A bar would’ve been fine.

I went to bars all the time, for cranberry juice and little bowls of peanuts.

But tonight I felt sure I knew what Kayla was really after: winning my vote against the thirty-meter telescope.

NASA wanted to build it on Mauna Kea, a volcano sacred to Native Hawaiians. Kayla wanted me to help her—and the group of Native Hawaiians leading the cause—to stop them.