Saturn's Rings Are Disappearing

She’s fussing over me like good women do, smoothing down the lapels of my jacket. It’s the one gifted to me by the best woman there ever was: my mother. She parts my hair down the middle with her long-tipped nails, while I fidget under her thumb. Hawk’s eyes, she has; they change colors in the sun, first yellowish, then somehow greenish by late afternoon. Healing bruises, those eyes are. If she is displeased with you, her eyes become nothing but black holes. Her pupils swallow the rest of her, the way animal mothers cannibalize their young.

She is only ever displeased. Never angry, never. If she were cross with me, I wouldn’t know it, because she keeps her facial expressions like a secret. She is my greatest contradiction. My heart’s smeared on my sleeve. I wear everything crooked and wrinkled, inside-out and twisted. I am a little boy still learning to dress myself. And she, like any good woman, preens me until I’m fit to be seen.

“Say, Hunter,” I croon, catching her hand in the crook of my elbow, “I think we should go for lunch, after the service.”

She perks up at the idea, and I pride myself in knowing that. A decade’s worth of her habits carved a home in me; when my brain is finally cracked open in death, I imagine it will be littered with her fingerprints, her three kinds of sneezes, and the hook of her nose. Or something even more grand, if you can think it: maybe she will be curled up inside there, a sweet creature in my nest of hair. You’d have to scoop her out with one palm, by the underbelly, soothing her all the way.

Only I could do such a thing, though. She trusts me. When she sunbathes on her back, only I am allowed to bask in her warmth. It took years of bed-sharing for us to lie comfortable, her back to my front. She is used to lying alone, in soldier’s position. Who hardened her, I wonder? She does not tell me.

She is used to lying.

Hunter tucks away the strand of hair that falls onto my forehead. “Yes,” she agrees, humming, and my heart nearly bursts, “yes, that would be lovely, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, lovely,” I say in a single breath, nodding without end. I sandwich her hands between my sweaty palms, and kiss each one of her rough, red knuckles. Sandwiches sound lovely to me, suddenly. Her hands, stacked in mine — bread and meat and cheese, all of them her hands, holding mine down. And for a satisfying crunch, I’d have those claws she calls fingernails.

“How about sandwiches? Anthony’s is right down the block.”

Her keen eyes are dark today, been that way since sunrise. The ring that separates pupil from iris is lost in a vacuum of distant space. She must see something I don’t, with that bird’s eye perspective. She has perfect vision. Better than perfect, but she never brags about herself, never. She stares at the hem of my jacket. 

“What’s this?”

I follow her gaze down the length of my chest, to the navy blue string at my waist. Mother’s jacket must have worn with time. The loose string is an ugly little thing, like me, dangling from the hem. My heart dangles from there, too.

I know her all too well.

“You know,” I ramble at breakneck speed, laughing through my words, “say, violin strings break, did you know — because they are aluminum-wound, and finger pressure on such a soft metal —”

“Dear,” Hunter interrupts me, and I am caught in the sudden light of her eyes. This is the end of the tunnel they speak of, I think: the light in your lover’s eyes, before they eat you raw. Love is a tired ache in my bones. I could die floating down a current of her toneless endearments. “Dearest, you can’t wear this.”

But it was a gift, I ache to tell her, from Mother. As if a who or why could change her lovely dagger of a mind. Hunter is a good woman, but she is not the best — not Mother — and it is a day to honor the best of women, so I ought to keep it on. I don’t know how to spit such venom. It is horrible just to think.

You are not best. Imagine hearing that? You are good, but not good enough for me to take off this jacket.

She’d never sleep facing me again, or flash her belly to me in the summer sun. I’d have to live with her back turned until the day I die, curling up in her warm spot like a mutt after their owner leaves bed.

“But,” I begin, and laugh again, something so revolting and high-pitched that I nearly vomit, “oh, my sweet, I need to. I really need to wear this jacket.”

“You can take it off,” Hunter speaks low and slow, rubbing her thumb beneath my eye, over the swell of cheekbone. Her nail is the sweetest edge I’ve ever felt. It ghosts my skin with a fondness for marking. She loves in traces left behind: red lipstick on my cheek, deep scratches down my spine, sucking bruises on my neck. I know she’s inside of my brain, somehow. I don’t know how I know it. I just do.

She tips my chin up to press her lips there. It is almost kiss-soft, but Hunter does not kiss. She is clean as a five-star chef when she minces affection. The only saliva she’ll let pool in her mouth is her own.

“I have a blazer in my closet that you can borrow,” she states, and is not asking me. Hunter does not beg, not even for me. She is above it. “Is this” — she tugs down on the hem of my suit jacket, hard — “really what you want to wear? To your mother’s funeral?”

I feel my face contort before I can help it. You didn’t know her. I want to bare my teeth, poke the sleeping bear, find my spine where I last left it on the floor with my dirty laundry. She sang to me. Did you know she trimmed her nails short? Always. She nicked me once, by accident, so she swore she’d never do it again. And she would kiss me on the cheek, just because she wanted to.

It feels juvenile, to stack her up against my own mother, like hands or sandwiches, in degrees of love. How unfair, to let her compete for the space she owns and deserves. She’s already inside my brain, I know it. I just wish she’d…

I don’t know. I just wish.

“No,” I concede, sighing.

Hunter smiles. It’s as sweet as anything. She is so, so good. She loves me. I am "dear." No, I am "dearest," the most beloved sight of all in her bird’s eye view. That is why she fusses over me.

She turns to fetch the blazer from her closet. As she goes, I cling to the broadness of her shoulders beneath her black dress. Hunter is so strong, and the sweetest creature to ever pin me down by the throat. Love aches like I do, when her eyes meet mine. 

There’s a fickle little light in those eyes, somewhere. Every pupil has its iris, even hers. Every black hole has a ring of light, where the heat collects like sweat — where love leaves a mark, takes space, sucks two into one until you can’t tell the difference. Our mark on the universe, I’d imagine, is in the shape of a hickey. 

Or maybe it’s just a nasty bruise. 

I don’t know.

***

We’re camped near the exit door like we’ve enlisted with the Devil. Cowards, the both of us. I say as much, and she laughs. It must be a family trait, that ugly laugh of ours, but I don’t remember Mother sounding that way. Hers was less ugly, more open and carefree in taking space. Mother laughed like Julie Andrews, in The Sound of Music; not her, but the mountains, the grassy knoll, and the way her wingspan seemed to stretch across it entirely. 

“Are you free?” I ask.

She stops laughing. The music is gone. I feel sorry for even asking. She furrows her brows, puffs out a thick cloud of smoke, and says: “For lunch? I mean, yeah, I could eat.”

“No!” I interject, far too loud, and wipe my sweaty palms down the line of my newly-tailored slacks. Why am I so damn nervous, all the time? Jumpy like a fawn in foliage, but not with that doe-eyed stare. Big brown eyes look ugly on me. Everything does, I think.

“No, I didn’t mean… I’m already headed to lunch, that is. With Hunter. She’s just bringing the car around.”

She recoils at that. Her thin upper lip curls around a thought I am not privy to, and she sneers. “Hunter? You still messing around with that witch?”

“Don’t!” I hiss, hands fumbling around my lighter. I whip my head around the corner, but she is nowhere to be seen. Still in the parking lot, I bet. She takes her time with things she doesn’t want to do. She’s no good at funerals, been to them too many times for a woman her age. Sinking back into the brick wall, I sigh. 

“Jesus, Aubrey, are you out of your mind?”

Aubrey flicks ash at me, petulantly. Always the younger sister. Always. Even when she’s nearly thirty. “Are you?” she asks, then cuts herself off with another hit. “I mean” — she gestures at me with her cigarette, head to toe — “look at you, man.” 

I stand up straight, suddenly, smooth down my lapels. “What?”

“She’s got you right in her mouth!”

My face screws up a little, half-disgusted, taken aback. 

“Not like that,” she amends, and knocks her head back against crooked brick lines, “like, I dunno, you’re so small next to her. You used to be so—”

I nearly empty my stomach onto the concrete, right then and there. “So?”

“Big,” Aubrey whispers, like a sad little secret, only it’s not. It’s as open as Julie Andrews’ arms on that too-green hill, singing too lovely to make any sense. That’s what I hate about movies. The final take is meant to be the best one. I’m sick of it.

“Yeah, well,” I snide, and lift her blazer’s sleeve to rub my runny nose. I stop as soon as I start. She’s going to know, my sick hindbrain screams, wants to run and hide. Hawk’s eyes. She always sees. “What else can I say? She makes me happy.”

“So did Mom,” Aubrey tacks on, like a counterargument. Our mother, a counterargument in a conversation on a smoke break. Is that all dying is? Is that what remembering is? I can’t bear it.

“Yeah?” I challenge her, rising up on my insoles, as unimposing as ever. My nose is still dripping with snot. My eyes are red-rimmed and itchy from all the crying. I’m a stunted child, at thirty, and I know it. Everyone knows it. “Yeah, what about her? Go on, say it.”

Aubrey deflates. She looks disappointed, and smiles down at me, ruefully. We used to fight tooth and nail over our heights. Down to the centimeter, we could argue, for days and weeks, sometimes even months. Whatever that fire was, once, lit under her, is gone now. It was beaten out of her. She breathes it away in wisps, cigarette by cigarette. 

“We remember her differently. That’s all.”

“She was a good woman,” I grieve, “the best there ever was.”

“She hit you,” Aubrey says, simply. The wry wit in her rasp is snuffed out completely. She must have cried over Mother, too. I hope so. I’m afraid to ask if she didn’t. “She hit me. And then she’d say she wouldn’t anymore. And then she did. Again, and again, and again.”

“She sang to us, don’t you remember?” I stutter, praying I can still feel out the melody. “Do, a deer, a female deer—” 

Aubrey chokes out our ugly laugh. Maybe it is Mother in there, after all. Who else could it be? Children shadow mothers, try on her shoes and fall flat on their faces. There will never be a more innocent forgery than that. You imitate how she loves, but nothing compares. 

“Yeah,” Aubrey admits, “she did. She was good.”

“Right!” I damn-near howl, “she was so, so good.”

“At singing,” she stresses, her rasp turned sour. “God, why are you so — I wish you’d — I was younger than you!” she yells, now, broken in a way which is rooted to her entire being. 

I know she wants to cry. She won’t. She picks herself back up right away, on an inhale of smoke. Always the older sister. Always. Even when she wasn’t supposed to be.

“I was younger than you, but I had to protect you, and that was — hell. It was hell. I’m sorry. It sounds shitty, now that I’m saying it.”

“Yeah,” I agree, hoarse. Love aches. It’s rotten, I think, but it’s our lot in life. At least we have that in common. “I’m sorry, too.”

“She makes you happy? Hunter?” Aubrey asks. It is sudden, and puts me six feet under. She sounds so hopeful, like it might be true, if she asks enough times.

She sounds like me.

“Yeah,” I lie, “she really does.”

“Good,” she exhales, and repeats herself for the sake of it, “good, that’s good.”

I watch the weight lift from her shoulders. She didn’t know it, but she was making herself smaller, too — hunching from six feet to far less. I feel like crying again. I don’t. I’m glad I can do this for her, at least. She deserves to be happier. I don’t think there’s a world where both of us are allowed to be. Better her than me. 

I pluck what’s left of her cigarette, drop it to the concrete, and crush it under my heel. These are my best pair of dress shoes; Hunter will hate it, if she smells the smoke on me, sees ash on my raised heel. She makes me wear these so I look taller, I realize, as I lift my shoe. But never taller than her. 

“Maybe in another life, both of us can love right,” Aubrey says. Her fingers twitch without a cigarette to hold.

“I love you, y’know.” I try to. In the only ways I can. None of it sounds like enough, because it isn’t. She needs love like Julie Andrews and the hills, without bounds, conditions, or the rotting ache. You can try and imitate love, but nothing compares: I know this much, and I’ve never been loved.

Or perhaps Hunter does love me, in the only way a soldier can, after he’s back from the bunker he called home. But I’ve always seen things that weren’t there. Storytellers do that, I think. That’s how unwatered grass sings. Hunter may have hawk’s eyes, but I’ve got an eye for the final take: the big lie that makes it to the bigger screen. Deer sounds exactly like dear in an eagle’s beak, when it swoops down for a kill.

Aubrey smiles at me. I know she doesn’t believe a single word. “I love you, too.”

“Did you know,” I explode, bursting at the seams like a dying star, “that Saturn’s rings are disappearing?”

And maybe it is love of some kind which takes her, when she indulges in me without interruption. What else could it be? I don’t want to know. 

“Really?” she awes, and elbows me in the side. “Hey, things are looking up, then!”

“We won’t live to see them gone completely,” I dismiss her, shucking Hunter’s blazer. I fold it carefully over my forearm, hands shaking. She’s not here, I remind myself. I shake anyway. “But imagine that. Imagine if a tree could lose its rings! Its own life, lived, then unlived.”

Aubrey barks out a hollowed laugh. It’s fine that it’s ugly, I think: our laughs, our lives. We’re allowed to be ugly. That is how we carry Mother with us. “The rest of the world is sad about it, I bet.”

“But not us,” I say.

“But not us,” she agrees.

“Is Saturn still Saturn, if it doesn’t have any rings?” I wonder, aloud. 

I look to my sister, the girl I’ve seen bleeding from the head, the mouth, the nose. I’ve seen her lips curled in a smile, around a cigarette, screaming her voice raw for help, screaming at me. You can see a person in so many ways, and they will never be complete. Is Aubrey still Aubrey, without all of the years gone to waste, unloved? Am I? The child in me demands an answer.

“Maybe,” Aubrey says, after a long while. “At least, I’d like to think so.”