Stars

It was well known throughout their neighborhood that Laura Klein’s husband, Richard (though he preferred Rich), slapped his wife once in a while.  It happened every few months, when he bounced a check or failed to unclog the sink, or when his temper flared for some other reason unknown to his wife or himself.  Most of their neighbors’ conversations regarding the couple found their end with one of the parties involved saying, “She lets him hit her, ya know?” and this seemed to explain away any number of unusual behaviors exhibited by the woman.  Mrs. Klein’s neighbors thought there was no way to anticipate what a woman who remained loyal to an irregularly violent man might do.  This expectation resulted in her friends and neighbors being unsurprised by the many surprising things Laura Klein did.  When she lugged a heavy patio chair from her backyard into her home, up her stairs, out her window and onto the suspended frame of criss-crossed, rotting wood that served as sun cover to a parking spot turned barbecue pit at the side of their home, her friends and neighbors didn’t think much of it.  Even when she began spending the greater part of her evenings up there.  Moon bathing, she called it.  When her natural hair color, a sandy blonde that she had never so much as highlighted, changed suddenly to a glossy, glowing black, no one said anything about it.  When she filed to adopt an abandoned sixteen-year-old boy, a teammate on her son’s soccer team whose drug-addicted parents had skipped town, no one was really taken aback.

The forsaken boy in question, Jeff Philips, had held no illusions about his parents.  He felt only sympathy, having observed on so many occasions how difficult parenting seemed to be for them.  At the one school event his father had attended, an awards ceremony where Jeff was given a wrestling trophy, he had watched the man look around the room at all the other dads with what appeared to be complete panic.  Jeff’s mother had always tried hard to be the mother she believed she could one day be, but the highs and lows of her drug habit meant everything had to be on her schedule.  Jeff would sometimes not see her for days, and then she would appear at his school during lunch period and offer to take he and his friends shopping or to the movies.  When this happened, Jeff tried not to let her see his embarrassment and would have to invent a last period exam or some other excuse for why he couldn’t leave campus.

The Kleins had two boys of their own, Joseph, who had gone out of state for college on a scholarship and who called and came home as rarely as possible, and a younger son, Eric, Jeff’s friend and teammate.  It was Eric who had discovered that Jeff was spending his nights in the high school gymnasium after coming home to an eviction notice stapled to the particleboard front door of his empty apartment.  Because Jeff’s older sister had skipped town herself a year earlier, he had no other family or living options, so he had convinced a janitor to turn a blind eye and set himself up in a cozy little corner of the locker room.  He used a yoga mat for a bed and a stolen, battery-powered lantern provided just enough light for him to see his homework, which he tried to always do.  If he didn’t keep up his grades, one of his teachers might have to make a phone call home, not to mention the academic contract he’d signed when joining the soccer team.

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The night Eric invited Jeff home for dinner, Laura Klein had been in a private sort of mood, so after putting out three place settings for the boys and her husband, she took her own plate out onto the terrace above the barbecue pit to eat with the stars.  Mrs. Klein owned about half a dozen books on astronomy, but had never read any of them.  Her interest had started as a girl when her grandmother told her the story of Cassiopeia.  Pointing her arthritic hand to the night sky, she had explained to her granddaughter that Cassiopeia was turned to stone and placed among the stars after objecting to the marriage of her daughter Andromeda and the hero Perseus.  The moral of this myth, according to her Grandmother, was that women slowly lost power throughout their life, like air from an old, sun-cracked tire.  “Young women,” her grandmother had told her, “rule the world.  Mothers rule over their home, but nothing else, and old women have no power at all. We can hardly control our bladders.”  Laura Klein had loved her grandmother very much, but had never fully understood the strange woman.  Nonetheless, she thought of her that night, as she had many nights, while lounging on the terrace, looking up at the glowing, stippled sky.

When Mr. Klein finished his dinner, leaving the boys at the table where Jeff was enjoying a second helping while Eric kept him company, he went upstairs to poke his head out the bedroom window to check on his wife, who, because of the private sort of mood she was in, did not invite her husband to sit with her on the terrace before coming to bed.  But she did allow him to perch on the windowsill, his dull gaze scanning the neighbor’s lawns, while she finished her moon bathing.  Laura and Richard Klein had been terribly in love since they were teenagers, and despite the occasional violence that began in the later years of their marriage, they remained a very affectionate couple.  They never parted company without voicing their love and punctuating it with a kiss.

“I love you, Scott,” she would say, gravely serious, whenever they said goodbye.  Although when he told her the same in return, as he never failed to do, it was always with soured humility, as if he were speaking instead about his baldness or some other flaw to which he knew himself powerless.  That night, he was about to offer her his love and duck back inside when he saw, from his vantage point out the second-floor window, Jeff Philips leaving their home.  This would not have given him pause except that he noticed the boy stop at a bush in the front lawn and pull a large duffel bag from its hiding spot.   Mr. Klein went quickly inside to question his son about the hidden bag, who told them all about Jeff’s parents and his temporary residency in the school’s locker room.

The next day, Laura Klein picked up Eric and Jeff from after-school soccer practice with the promise of a meal from their favorite submarine sandwich shop.  In the car on the way home, while the boys took big, greedy bites of their paper-wrapped sandwiches, Mrs. Klein said she wouldn’t mind, even though they had school the next day, if Jeff wanted to spend the night.  She could make an exception, she said, for one night.  Mrs. Klein made the same offer three evenings in a row, and Jeff accepted each time.  Mrs. Klein would then listen in on the line as Jeff pretended to have a conversation with his parents, explaining to the dial tone that he would be sleeping over just one more night.  On the fourth evening she confronted him, and Jeff told her a story about his parents having to go out of state for work and not being able to afford to take him along, which Jeff knew was not the whole truth, but then, he didn’t know the whole truth, and it was as honest an explanation for their absence as he felt he could offer.

“Well Jeff, if you need a place to stay right now, for as long as your parents are going to be away, I hope you’ll think about staying with us,” she said.

“I’ll have to think about it,” Jeff replied.

Within a couple weeks, it began to seem as if Jeff had been there for years.   Eric had begun to think of him as a brother, and it didn’t hurt Jeff’s seamless integration that he was a fresh and willing audience to Mr. Klein’s well-worn jokes, or that he happily sat with Mrs. Klein on the rickety terrace for hours, sometimes talking but more often not, and always gazing up at the stars.  One night, she told him the story of Cassiopeia and her grandmother’s theory about it.  Jeff told her it was bullshit, and then quickly apologized for using the word bullshit.  He believed there was nothing in the world stronger than a woman.  Even his own mother, who he knew to be weaker than most women, was still stronger than any man.  Jeff said that if Cassiopeia hadn’t been powerful, Perseus wouldn’t have had to banish her to the stars, adding that he must’ve been intimidated by her.  Mrs. Klein liked this theory better than that of her grandmother and told Jeff he was a very clever and sweet boy, which made him blush and put an abrupt end to the conversation.

Eric had spent the first week or so playing with feelings of jealousy toward Jeff.  This had continued only until he recognized how much he enjoyed having the attention of his parents diverted, and then he used the opportunity to stay out extra late whenever he wanted and even started smoking cigarettes openly in front of them.  He had adopted the habit a couple years earlier from his older brother, and up until then he thought it was something he had to keep absolutely secret.  As it turned out, his parents hardly noticed.

After a month or so, Mr. and Mrs. Klein began arguing.  Richard felt they were doing the right thing by helping Jeff, but knew that some official, legal protocol would need to be followed if the boy were going to stay there on a permanent basis.  Laura understood his concern, but worried that taking such steps might result in Jeff being placed in a shelter or a group home.  The couple cycled through the same argument for a number of weeks until they really got into it one night and excused themselves to scream in the privacy of their bedroom.  Their fight could still be heard from the backyard, where the boys were playing Horse on a half-sized basketball hoop Mr. Klein had built himself.  Eric had just taken the lead with an impressive bounce shot off the fence, when the yelling came to an abrupt stop.  With the fight apparently over, Jeff felt immediate relief, but Eric became furious.  He punted the basketball into the neighbor’s yard and lit a cigarette.  Jeff sat across the lawn without speaking while Eric smoked.  When he had finished, flicking the butt into the same neighbor’s backyard, Eric said they should go get something to eat.

They went to the sandwich shop and had lunch, and then, at Eric’s urging, walked to a strip mall close to their home where they wasted an hour or so trying to look suspicious, baiting sales clerks into following them around the stores.

When the boys came home, Laura Klein, who had plastered a thick layer of foundation over the still very visible bruise, asked if she could make them sandwiches, and before Jeff could explain that they had just eaten, Eric said yes.  Please.

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The adoption process was much more complicated than Mrs. Klein had anticipated, and far more costly than Mr. Klein had imagined when he gave in to his wife’s plea.  Nonetheless, the couple spent hours every night calmly working through the details and strategizing their approach with child services.  Jeff watched in wonder as they went about their nightly routine, shuffling through papers and intermittently sliding a bowl of almonds back and forth to one another across the glass table.  For a week, Jeff gazed at the deep purple bruise on Mrs. Klein’s cheek, watching day after day as it slowly faded.  No one in the family had said anything about the fight, or the bruise, and so Jeff too had left the subject unbroached, but he did make a point to stop laughing at Mr. Klein’s jokes, which he decided had never been funny anyway.

The Kleins were awarded temporary custody, but over the weeks that followed they were subjected to various interviews and background checks to confirm their suitability as adoptive parents.  Jeff told them on multiple occasions that he would be all right, even if they put him in a group home somewhere.  It would only be for a couple of years, he kept telling them.

“You really don’t need to go through all this,” he said, “all I want is… I don’t wanna cause any trouble.”

“You deserve a family,” Laura Klein said, “You deserve a real family.”

The case manager assigned to the Kleins gathered all that she could from the family and then set about meeting with some of the Kleins’ neighbors, starting with Mr. and Mrs. Gomez from two doors down.  Because Leslie Gomez had never seen Richard Klein behave violently (only the result of such behavior), and also because she felt reasonably certain that he had never hit his boys, she did not see any reason to give the case manager the idea that the Klein home would not be a loving, supportive environment for Jeff.  Mr. and Mrs. DeFranco, a devoutly religious couple who lived in a small house on the end of the street, did not feel it was their place to speak to the suitability or non-suitability of the Klein home for an adopted child, and asked to be excused from commenting either way.  The case manager took them for a strange couple, which they were, and decided, with a number of other cases weighing on her mind, that she had gotten all she needed from the neighbors.

One night, while Mr. Klein was out with people from his work, Mrs. Klein and the boys were sitting out on the terrace drinking champagne (just one glass apiece, Laura Klein had insisted) in celebration of the still pending but likely approval of their adoption application.  The case manager had called Mrs. Klein that afternoon to say that the report was still awaiting authorization from her superior, but that theirs was a very strong application.  Mrs. Klein leaned all the way back in her lounge chair, her arms stretched above her head, stroking the thin black strands of hair cascading behind her.  She and the boys stared up at the constellations, all grinning and relishing the ease of the moment.  Eric lit a cigarette and his mother insisted that he put it out.  He refused and she told him he either put it out or he go smoke it somewhere else.

“You know I’m allergic,” she added, though they both knew she was not.

“Fine,” Eric snarled, and climbed down one of the thin beams that held up the terrace, landing with a smack next to the barbecue pit, where he quickly relit the cigarette.

“The smoke is still coming up here,” his mother whined.  Eric walked down the street a ways and popped himself down on a square of sidewalk in front of the Wilkins house, hoping their pretty daughter might see him and come out to say hi.  On the terrace, Jeff and Mrs. Klein did not speak for a few minutes, but after too long a silence, Jeff couldn’t help himself any longer.

“Eric said they were asking the neighbors about you and Mr. Klein… do you think anyone said anything?”  Laura Klein did not answer him.  She stared up at Cassiopeia and continued to tug at her hair.

“If you want,” she finally spoke, “He said we could turn the garage into a room for you…if it’s too cramped in Eric’s room.  He’s really good with stuff like that.  I’m sure it could be really nice.”

On the day of the final interview, the family was nervously preparing the house, trying to make everything perfect.  Mr. Klein waxed the kitchen floor, something he had never taken the time to do before, while Mrs. Klein tested smoke alarms and hunted for finger smudges on every glass surface in the house.  The boys cleaned up the front and back yards and although they had promised to clear their school stuff from off the living room table, they started kicking around a soccer ball and forgot.  Mrs. Klein started to clean up the books and papers herself, but her husband stopped her, arguing that having homework left out could only give a good impression.  They both laughed at themselves for the way they were behaving, but continued on, cleaning where they had already cleaned and straightening what had already been straightened.  When Mrs. Klein ran out of places to clean, she set about clearing the table after all, tucking everything away into the boys’ school bags.  After he had showered and changed into a nice outfit, Mr. Klein saw the empty table and immediately pulled the boys’ work out of their backpacks again and did his best to recreate the scene as it had been.  He then left for the grocery store to pick up some cheese and crackers and assorted spreads.  Mrs. Klein laughed when she saw the table, and continued to chuckle as she began again to pick up the whole mess.  In the backyard, the boys distracted themselves dribbling the soccer ball, but they were both regularly looking through the window at the kitchen clock in anticipation of the caseworker’s arrival.

When Richard Klein returned with a grocery bag full of foreign cheeses, the names of which he couldn’t even pronounce, and boxes of thin, delicate crackers like the ones he’d seen served with caviar one time at a business dinner, he saw that the table had been cleared again.  And his temper flared.

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Eric didn’t understand why he was the only one who protested when the caseworker ushered Jeff into her car.  His mother, who hadn’t even bothered to cover the slowly blossoming bruise with make up, just went upstairs and cried as the woman led Jeff out the door.  As the whole ugly scene played out, Mr. Klein was in the kitchen, speaking in angry whispers to someone over the phone.  Eric had screamed and pleaded with the woman to let his friend stay, but she had no choice but to ignore him.

Jeff Philips spent only two weeks in a home for troubled boys, the only place in the area with an available bed, before slipping out one night and setting off in search of another locker room or empty building in which to take up shelter.   The home called the Kleins to inform them he had gone missing and to ask if they knew where he might go.  After getting the call, Mrs. Klein spent more time than usual up on the terrace, no longer looking up at the stars, but with her eyes forever scanning the neighborhood, hoping to see the figure of Jeff appear on their street, tired and scared, making his way toward their house, coming home.

The Kleins didn’t talk about Jeff much once he was gone.  Eric thought of him often though and was frequently being asked about him by other kids at school.  Every time he had to tell someone, “No, I still haven’t heard anything from him,” he would try to add, “but he just lived at my house for a while.  We were never that close.”

Jeff Philips returned to the Klein home just one time, more than three years later.  He arrived in a car he had bought himself with money he had earned himself.  He came back proud and angry, and looking for Richard Klein.  Laura Klein believed it to be her imagination at first, when she saw him step out of the rusted Pontiac, walk up to the house and climb a teetering beam onto the old, splintered terrace.  He asked if Richard was home and she told him he wasn’t.  She asked him to sit, but he wouldn’t.  He looked strange to her, overgrown and ugly.  His skin was still pink and smooth in some places, but dry and leathery in others.  He demanded to know when Mr. Klein would be home, but she said she didn’t know.  His voice straining as if it would break, he asked her how she could know so little, and before he could stop himself, his arm went up.   His fingers curled in like a startled animal, and he brought his fist down, hard, across Laura Klein’s cheek.