CELESTE

This short story was sold many years ago to a source that went south before publication. Seems to be a habit with me. 

Celeste would often come to watch while I tended the small patch of ground I had appropriated for a garden at the edge of the woodlot near the married students housing complex. It wasn't much, some tomatoes, lettuce, a mound of zucchini, a couple of eggplants which never got much bigger than plums, but it kept me out of the apartment while my ex-husband rewrote his thesis. She would walk by after class with her briefcase over one shoulder and her laptop over the other, as clean and crisp as a fresh salad, looking as if nothing could ruffle her. Her smile was so warm the vegetables seemed to grow while she stood there. Celeste made you happy to be near her. Eventually, we struck up a conversation; and, shortly after that, I moved into her off-campus apartment. My marriage was over in all but name only, and she was having trouble managing on the teaching fellowship the mathematics department gave her while she worked on her doctorate. I had no place else I wanted to go, and she had to stay put until the end of the year. It was a good arrangement.

She thought of us as the ugly one and the pretty one, though, in fact, I was no prettier than she. Her legs were better, shaped well and quite long, in fact, for a girl her size, and her skin was clear and soft as a butterfly's wing. But, she was born with a hump on her back, and I, thank God, was not. It was a sibling that would have been her twin except the egg split, twisted around and attached itself to her spine. It never developed, although x-rays revealed jaws, a backbone and tiny hips. There was no indication of sex. It formed an elliptically shaped mound covered with skin. It was shiny, I remember, and smooth. I must have already done my mourning for the marriage because being free of it felt like bursting out of the water after being under too long. My ex, I’m certain, felt the same, the only thing we agreed on. For weeks, each morning, I woke up laughing. The loneliness would set in later, but now I saw all the colors of the world again. My appetite came back. I wanted everything from column A and everything from column B. As for men, I brought home all shapes and sizes. My madness amused her, but she wanted none of it for herself.

It wasn't that Celeste didn't like men. She did. She had them as friends. She tutored undergrads. She seemed very much at ease around them, but that was because being with them romantically or sexually was not even an issue. From the time she was a little girl, Celeste knew she could never marry. She knew that the weight of the earth would gradually, inexorably pull her back. She thought of herself as a child's magnet, the one painted red and shaped like a horseshoe, her arms and legs being pulled towards each other. When the spine weakened, they would come together. She decided long ago that if she were to have men in her life at all, she must not make them uncomfortable. Her manner made it clear that she saw them as friends not lovers. She was just Celeste. If she liked you, she wanted to be around you. It was that simple.

Celeste had two passions, one of them mathematics. I found this subject absolutely indecipherable. She thought it elegant. Once, over a bottle of wine, I came close to grasping something she said, but it skipped away from me as quickly as it came. She used the word "symmetry" a lot and was fascinated with what she called the celestial mechanics of Isaac Newton’s gravity, a universe filled with falling bodies where everything, even the tiniest speck of dust, pulls at everything else. A note on her desk read, "Any body undergoing gravitational collapse must eventually form a singularity." It was written in block letters with a black magic marker.

One afternoon, I came home early and caught her standing at her desk. She had been crying, the only time I ever saw her do so. The note, written on cardboard taken from a laundered shirt, was propped against a pile of books. The same words had been written on a dozen square, yellow post-its that she had stuck to the telephone, the lampshade and the drawers of her desk.

"What's the matter?", I asked.

"Nothing."

Her other passion was horticulture. Our apartment was filled with plants. Those that needed bright light hung from every window and lined each sill. Those that didn't stood or sat or hung in the very places that were right for them. My favorite was a wandering Jew with tiny red-green leaves that cascaded over its pot like a fashionable hairdo. Celeste was always pinching, re-potting or pruning. She kept busy with her plants the way other women kept busy with knitting. She would mull and talk and dream on her feet this way. I often saw her stop in the middle of fiddling with one of her plants, march to her desk and jot down the solution to some math problem she had been trying to solve. Celeste could grow an avocado tree from a seed and a fern from a carrot top. She could bring a plant back from the dead, but her specialty, that which gave her the most pleasure, was grafting. To take two different stalks and create one beautiful thing was sublime to her. It was Celeste's way of making up for her awkward intrusion into the universe. Perhaps it was a way of celebrating her twin. Whatever, she would set things straight. She would create a natural order of things as she thought they ought to be.

There was one man with whom we both became particularly close. He was an instructor in the history department and one of the handsomest men I have ever met in my life. He was handsome like real people are handsome, not like a movie star. He had curly black hair and hazel eyes. He was fit, but didn't make an issue of it. We met him the day our tub overflowed and damaged our floor as well as his ceiling below. He offered to fix it himself before the landlord knew anything had gone wrong. It would cost us a couple of meals he said, and smiled. Since neither Celeste nor I cooked anything worth eating, we said he'd have to settle for pizza and the Colonel. A deal's a deal, he said. His name was Paul, and he had a carpenter's hands. I knew if I slept with him I would doubtlessly botch it; so, in a rare moment of clarity and self-control, I made a decision not to. Why turn a good friendship into a bad love affair? So, we shared him, Celeste and I, in a manner of speaking. From the moment we met we became fast friends. Paul and Celeste would wait up for me at night, and the three of us would laugh at the gory details of my latest adventure in singles-land. He and I would go to the movies in the afternoon. Not a day went by when some combination of two of us, or three of us, didn't have coffee together. Paul was dating a girl at the time; but Celeste and I knew, even if she didn't, that Paul was accepting a two year fellowship in Germany at the end of the following semester, and that she would not be going with him.

Shortly after New Year's, Celeste began brooding about something. She became quiet and withdrawn. You would say something to her, repeat it even, and she wouldn't hear you. She had always laughed easily and listened well, only now she did neither. When I asked her what was the matter, she shook her head and refused to tell me. Celeste had always made an effort to stand as straight as she could; but, now, the weight of her problem as well as that on her back dragged her down. She hunched under them. It seemed difficult for her to move. One day she walked into my room and said, "I'm going to have a baby."

"You're pregnant?"

"No," she answered, "But, I've been thinking about it, and I've decided I'm going to have one." With that, she smiled and seemed to straighten. She was the old Celeste again. I was frightened for her, for all the obvious reasons, but having been made, the decision brought her back to life again, so I was happy, too. She made me promise not to tell anyone. Anyone. It was to be our own little conspiracy. The two of us were going to find a way to bring Celeste's child into the world. I would be its godmother. That was the easy part.

Since marriage had never been an option for her, courtship had never been a part of her life. Where would she find a man, and how would she get him to do what she wanted? We made lists, went to shopping malls, checked out the faculty. She considered her students. We went to a bar. One afternoon, in a fit of inspiration, I suggested we drive by the police academy. Celeste rejected every man we saw. It was important to her that when it happened, it be done right, since she didn't think she had the heart to do it again. It was equally important that the father of her child never know it.

Spring came and with it the Winter thaw, new buds, creeks and rivers swollen with rushing water, and weather so mercurial it raged one day, burbled the next. Celeste was no closer to her baby than she had been months ago. She was getting depressed. She said she wasn't, but I saw it. Sometime in May, about a month before the school year was to end, Paul invited the two of us upstate to watch him race his kayak in white water. It was still early Spring there, and a horde of people in bright flannel shirts, down vests and knit caps converged on the small town at the mouth of the river with all the exuberance of a rodeo crowd. My God, what a rush! We sat on a boulder and watched the race with the spray leaping from the river in drops that glittered like diamonds. We watched Paul slip rocks and glide through tunnels of water as if he were translucent. Celeste, giggling, told me she felt light as air. It was there she decided that Paul would father her child. As soon as we got back home, she began to prepare for it. Celeste planned that evening as carefully as a new bride her wedding.

It would have to be at night. It would have to be when exams were over. It would have to be when they had a full evening ahead of them because Celeste knew that seducing Paul would take time. I told her she should just out and ask him, but she said no, she couldn't do that, not ask, no. She wanted it to... happen...just happen. Of course, she was also afraid he might say no, and that was not an option she was about to allow. What we finally decided was that we would invite Paul up for a bon voyage dinner, a real one that Celeste and I promised to cook, and then I would make some kind of excuse so as not to be there.

Celeste chose to wear a billowy, diaphanous skirt because her legs were so good. Paul would see them when she walked by the light. She also chose it because it allowed her to move without restriction, and because she would never have to take it off. She was careful that the cut of the skirt helped to hide the curve of her back that began just above her waist. We went shopping together for a top and found one that was a rough weave, black and full, with peasant sleeves and a large hood which fell across her shoulders and down her back. Its front was cut in a conservative "V". Paul’s hands could slip under and lift it easily. Celeste bought a smooth, silk camisole to wear underneath with threads of gold running through it. She debated whether or not to wear panties. She imagined the intrigue of getting them off, how exquisite their removal could be, but she decided against it. Celeste wanted Paul inside her. She wanted nothing that could make him stop and think.

The dinner was a beauty: green leek soup foraged from the woods bordering campus, roast leg of lamb, and tiny, fresh, baby vegetables in a sauce the color of a rose. I had a friend choose the wine. Celeste bought marijuana for the first time in her life. While she cooked, I changed the light bulbs in the living room to softer ones with lower wattage. Celeste thought candles were too obvious and then I left. Paul brought wine as well; and, a few hours later, he and Celeste made love. She found herself on top of him moving with such an unbearable lightness she would have died gladly had she not had another purpose. She knew as he came under her that his sperm had taken.

Paul left for Germany two days later. He hugged us both goodbye. I thought I saw tears in his eyes, but I wasn't sure. I do know that he continued to twist his head around and look our way as his taxi took him to the airport, and that his eyes were on Celeste all the time. Soon after this, I moved to the Coast. Celeste was offered a full time position on the faculty, so she stayed on. Nine months later, she had a little boy. He was right on schedule, perfect in every way. I’d flown from California to be there with her the whole time. He was a pistol, all right, with dark, dancing eyes and a shock of black hair. When I got back to the coast, we talked on the phone while she nursed him, and she put the receiver next to his little mouth so I could hear the sucking noises he made. He screamed bloody murder when she shifted her weight and her breast popped out of his mouth for a second. "He keeps me hopping," she laughed, "My God. My God. Do you believe it?" She never told Paul and made me swear again that I wouldn't, either.

Two years passed. The baby grew. He was a toddler now, big for his age "My muscle," Celeste joked. We hadn't seen each other in all this time, but we spoke often. I had a job that was glamorous and so fast paced it kept me from thinking about my seriously puny problems. Celeste had moved up in rank already, and she had taken to motherhood with a ferocity that rivaled a grizzly's. I laughed and told her she should write her own book on child development, but she was serious when she said she was thinking about it. I might be able to imagine someone loving as much as she did, maybe, but I cannot imagine anyone loving so responsibly. Talking with her made me realize how much I loved her, too. I couldn't bear it when she told me her bones were weakening and her body was beginning to cave in under the weight of her back, not so much that you could really tell the difference right now, she said she had only lost about a half inch of height so far but it would continue to happen until she was bent double to the ground with no room for her heart and lungs to function properly anymore. The only thing she was glad about, she said, was that it would take some time.

Meanwhile, Paul, who kept in touch with the both of us by an occasional postcard, finished up his stint in Germany and returned to the United States. It was the summer of that year and, before taking a teaching position in the midwest, he went back to the university to close out some unfinished business. He was driving by our old apartment when he saw Celeste tending a flowerbed with a toddler crouched beside her patting the grass with the palms of his hands. He stopped and hugged her hello, and they talked for awhile. Paul was, of course, surprised to see that Celeste had a child, but he still had no idea the little boy was his. He felt awkward around her, but he didn't know why. "You could have written and told me. We're friends, right? Why didn't you?", he asked. She shrugged.

"You seemed far away," she said.

"I'm glad for you. It's really what you want, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes," she replied, "It's really what I want."

Then Paul made some excuse about having to go, congratulated her, got in his car and drove off. Celeste called me right away. The worst was over, she said. She dreaded seeing him again. Now, she had. That was that.

Paul called me that evening and told me he had seen her. He was shocked to learn that Celeste had a little boy and upset with both of us for not having told him. "Why didn't you write me?", he asked.

"She didn't want me to."

"What's there to be ashamed of? He's an adorable kid, bright, strong. He's walking, you know. Have you seen him?" Paul went on and on talking about the child, and it seemed to me he could have been describing himself as a little boy.

"I just don't understand why neither one of you bothered to tell me", he complained again.

"It wasn't that," I said.

"What?", he asked.

"That nobody bothered."

"Well, nobody did."

"She asked me not to tell you, I didn't tell you. It wasn't that nobody bothered."

"What's going on here?", Paul asked, a new tone in his voice. He sounded frightened. That was when I told him. I couldn't keep quiet anymore.

He screamed at me. I never heard anybody so angry before. I begged him to calm down before he hurt someone, but he slammed the receiver so hard I thought he had pulverized it. I tried to get Celeste on the phone to warn her he was probably on his way over, but I couldn't reach her. For a week I tried to call, but Celeste didn't answer. Where was she? Finally, three a.m. one morning, the phone rang. It was Celeste. She was crying. "Are you all right?", I asked. "Did he hurt you?"

"No," she answered, "He wanted to, at first, or so he said, but I never really thought he would. He's not that kind of a man."

"Why are you crying?"

"He wants to marry me."

Paul had rushed over to her house in a fury. It was frightening, she said. He tore into her, cursed and yelled until the baby screamed and the neighbors threatened to call the police. Finally, he quieted down. He sat on the sofa and stared at her as she told him everything. When she was finished, he got up and left without saying another word. Days went by. She didn't hear from him. She thought it had passed. Then he showed up unexpectedly and asked her to marry him. "He loves me," she said.

"And you?", I asked.

"I'm frightened."

"Are you going to marry him?"

"He loves me," she repeated, "I can't imagine why, but I believe he does. Yes, I'm going to marry him."

That was a long time ago. Celeste bore two more children, both sons, and I can see her now, surrounded by all her "men". She and Paul bought an old farm with a huge house. They had a garden and an apple orchard, and she filled each room with the plants and flowers she raised herself. It was in this house, with Paul at her side, that she died. The weight of the earth finally pulled her back. The undertaker whispered about the need to break her body in order that she be laid straight in her coffin, but Paul refused. He had her buried near the garden, curled into her grave like a fetus waiting to be born. She faced east so the sun could warm her as it rose.
 
Beautiful women wondered how she ever managed it? I once overheard someone ask her if she didn't feel grateful to have such a wonderful man? Celeste looked at the person as if she couldn't quite comprehend what was being said. Later, she said to me, "Paul loves me, and I love him. I feel blessed. But grateful? I've never felt that."


                                                        End