When her Lyft driver dropped her off at Greene Street, the sky had been dark for two hours and once again the telescope had been wheeled out onto Paul’s front yard. His car was not in the driveway; his kids were manning the search of the heavens. Bette was making straight for her door when the son’s voice reached across the driveway.
“Good evening” was all he said.
Bette gave a nod and made a sound like g’deve but didn’t slow.
“Wanna see the moons of Jupiter?” This was the girl asking. “Smack in the middle of the sky and cool as hell?”
“No, thank you,” Bette said.
“You’re missing one gorgeous show!” The girl had a voice like Dale’s, open and friendly, prone to enthusiasm over the smallest things.
“No eclipse tonight?” Bette was getting her front door keys from her purse.
“Those are infrequent. Jupiter is out all summer long,” the girl said. “I’m Nora Legaris.”
“Hi. Bette Monk.”
“Mother of Dale and Sharri and Eddie? Dad said your kids are a hoot.” The girl headed Bette’s way, stepping onto the driveway. “You bought the Schneiders’ house. They moved to Austin, the lucky punks. That’s my brother.” Nora pointed to the telescope. “Tell Ms. Monk your name!”
“Lawrence Altwell-Chance Delagordo Legaris the Seventh,” he said. “You can call me Chick.”
Bette looked confused, like a woman with three margaritas in her, which she was. “Chick?”
“Or Larry. Long story. You want to see what Galileo saw centuries ago? Changed the course of human history.”
To wave off such an invitation, to flee into her house, would have been rude, very un–Greene Street. Nora and Chick were charming kids. So Bette said, “Put that way, guess I better.”
Bette crossed the boundary of her house into Legaris territory, her first ever visit. Chick stepped back from the telescope, offering Bette access. “Behold Jupiter,” he said.
Bette put her eye up to the lens at the open end of the carpet tube.
“Try not to bump the telescope. It should be lined up right.”
Bette blinked. The glass of the lens brushed her eyelash. She couldn’t make any sense of what she was looking at. “I don’t see a thing.”
“Chick,” Nora sighed. “You can’t say ‘behold Jupiter’ and fail to have Jupiter beholdable.”
“Sorry, Ms. Monk. Let me see.” Chick looked through a much smaller telescope mounted on the huge carpet tube and made adjustments up and down and left and right. “Bang solid fat as a goose!”
“I sure hope you behold Jupiter now,” said Nora.
With her eye again so close to the lens her mascara could have marred it, Bette saw, at first, nothing, and then a brilliant pinhole of light. Jupiter. Not only Jupiter but four of its moons in a straight line, a single moon to its left, and three to its right, as clear as could be.
“Yowza!” Bette cried. “It’s as clear as can be! That’s Jupiter?”
“King of the planets and the Jovian moons,” Chick said. “How many can you see?”
“Four.”
“Just like Galileo,” Nora said. “He put two bits of glass in a brass pipe, pointed it at the brightest object in the Italian sky, and saw just what you are looking at. Slammed the door on the Ptolemaic theory of the universe. Got him in some hot water.”
Bette could not take her eye away. She had never looked deep into the Cosmos and seen another planet with her own eyes. Jupiter was gorgeous.
“Wait till you see Saturn,” Chick said. “Rings and moons and the whole shebang.”
“Show me!” Bette was suddenly hooked on celestial views.
“Can’t,” Chick explained. “Saturn doesn’t rise until very early morning. If you want to set your alarm for quarter to five, I’ll meet you here and line it up for you.”
“Four forty-five a.m.? That will not happen.” Bette stepped away from the telescope and those Jovian moons. “Now, explain Chick to me.”
Nora laughed. “Abbott and Costello. The skinny one was Chick in one of their movies. We watched it about a thousand times and I started calling my brother by it. Chick stuck.”
“Better than La-La-La-Larry Le-Le-Legaris.”
“I get that,” Bette said. “I was Elizabeth, along with seven other girls in fourth grade.” She looked at Jupiter again through the telescope and once more marveled at the sight.
“Here comes the old man.” Nora saw the headlights of her father’s car coming down Greene Street. Bette thought to bolt for her front door, but to do so now would be such an obvious dis that she waved off her flight instinct.
“What are you punks doing on my lawn?” Paul said, getting out of his car. Another fellow, a redhead not much older than Chick, climbed out of the passenger seat. “Not you, Bette. These two scalawags.”
Nora turned to Bette. “Dad uses words like scalawags. Sorry you witnessed it.”
“This is Daniel,” Paul said, pointing to the redheaded fellow, who, Bette could not help but notice, was very, very thin, possibly malnourished. He was wearing clothes that were brand new and surely not of his own taste, he wore them so uncomfortably. The kids exchanged greetings and Bette said hello.
“You have the Big Guy in sight?” Paul looked at the gas giant in the sky. “Daniel, you ever see Jupiter before?”
“I have not.” With no other comment, Daniel stepped to the big tube and looked into its eyepiece. “Wow,” he said with no expression.
“Bette? You have a gander?” Paul asked.
“I did. Made me say yowza.” Bette looked at Nora. “Sorry you witnessed me saying yowza.”
“Yowza is good,” said Nora. “A catchall superlative. Like big-time or super-duper.”
“Like swingin’,” said Chick.
“Or bodacious,” said Paul.
“Or tits,” said Daniel. Again, no expression.
No one knew what to say to that.
The Daniel fellow spent a few days at the Legaris place. Bette heard the two men talking in the mornings, their distant voices coming over the fence in the backyard. She saw them leaving together in the evenings around 7:00 p.m., and then one night the skinny redhead was gone. Greene Street became, once again, a place of bikes, balls, and kids playing with a decided headiness since the beginning of school was bearing down. The end of summer was suddenly in the air, palpable.
On the final evening of August, Bette took the kids for pizza at a place that was wall-to-wall arcade games. When they returned home, the block was a quiet heaven after all that noise. The Patel kids were playing with a garden hose on their lawn, so Eddie and Sharri joined them. Dale went into the house. Bette lingered out front in a cooling, lovely breeze that stirred the leaves of her sycamore. Some of the spare pizza made it from the take-home box and into her hand as she leaned against one of the lower limbs, nibbling away.
There was no sign of Paul Legaris. His car was not in his driveway, so she felt relaxed in the calm of Greene Street, though guilty over what was her fourth slice of pepperoni, olive, and onion. As she tossed the thin crescent of uneaten crust into the grass—some bird would soon find it—she thought she saw a very large insect crawling across Paul Legaris’s driveway.
She nearly let out an eek of terror—that could have been a huge spider—but then realized it was only a set of keys lying on the ground, right where Paul’s car would have been parked.
Bette, then, found herself in something of a dilemma—what was a neighbor to do? She should pick up the keys, hold on to them until Paul came home, then knock on his front door and return them. If indeed they were his keys, as was most probable, she would save him the angst of a fruitless search. Anyone would do that, but—pop—Paul would be so happy at getting his keys back he would insist on repaying Bette with a dinner he would cook himself. Say! How’s about I BBQ some ribs in the backyard with my own sauce recipe!