Men on the Moon

Nobody at NASA gave a goddamn about the weather in Jersey. This fact, as true and as simple as it was, had not stopped my Aunt Rosie from pacing around the parlor all morning and pressing her face to the front window in search of thunderstorms. My mother had yelled at her for smearing rouge on the glass, and she, of course, had yelled right back. And soon, everybody was yelling. 

It was the day of my brother Eddie’s wedding, the day of the moon landing, and rain meant a lot of things. It meant a shower of good fortune, pouring out from God Himself, Amen, onto the newlyweds, but it also meant the destruction of our poor astronauts (one of whom was a good Jersey boy)—spacemen, who were already so far outside our atmosphere that nothing happening here could do anything to them. It didn’t matter, though, not to Rosie. They would be struck by lightning, and they would plummet into the Atlantic, and they would die, and we’d lose the race. 

But it didn’t rain. It was goddamn muggy, though, muggy enough to cause the streamers tied to the back of Eddie and Marie’s limousine to half-melt and make colors streak down the white, but it didn’t rain. 

I stepped out the reception into the parking lot that evening to light up a cigarette, a loner from the pocket of my too-tight tuxedo. The restaurant itself was empty by now; I could see the tables through the windows. Marie’s father had only rented the backroom because he was a cheap-ass. But even though the party was starting to fade, cousins and friends rushing home to watch whatever was going to happen happen, I could still hear the stragglers through the closed door. 

Striking up a match from the book I’d snagged from the front counter, I watched the smoke furl upward toward the moon. They were up there right now. That was goddamn insane. They were up there, and I was standing here, looking up at them. And maybe some part of me really could reach them like this, I thought. Maybe they would see my cigarette smoke, and they would know I was here. So few people really did.

“You all better hurry. You gotta get there before Marie does,” Rosie yammered, rushing out my parents’ front door after my uncle, who was waving his arms at her. “I know, Ron. I know. Start the goddamn car, would you? Listen, Eddie, if you see her in the dress, it’s bad luck. Bad, bad luck. Curse on your house. You’ll never have children, and it’ll break my heart. Get to the church, get inside, and God help you, don’t look out any windows.” 

And so we did. That afternoon, me and Eddie and the three other groomsmen, only one of whom was good-looking, squeezed into the back of a Lincoln Continental. They had shoved past me shouting for the radio. And climbing in last, I watched from my place in the rear as the four of them leaned over the front like gargoyles. 

The chauffeur, which I guess is what you call a person in this line of work, was actually wearing one of those little caps you see on television. He already had the broadcast running, and we sat there on the curb together and listened.

“We’re gonna be late! They’re gonna yell at us, Eddie.” But no one paid me any mind because, just like that, it was really happening. The radio counted down the descent, and when the Eagle finally landed (and nothing exploded), the car, even the driver, erupted into cheers. With that, as if noticing the time, the vehicle revved and swerved as it took off, nearly hitting the sidewalk and taking out a lamppost. I gripped the door handle.

The streets in which I had grown up, the school, the druggist, passed by in a technicolor blur of familiar sights and sounds. Everything was exactly the same as it had always been, but just like that, it was different too. The world was different, so this would be a moment, I realized. From here on out, there would be everything before it and everything after it. 

We had to take a detour to loop around because a road was closed, and Marie and her bridesmaids had arrived in the time it took. I watched Saint John’s rising in the distance. A woman in a pink dress, someone’s sister, was trying to flag us down as we rolled up, and I learned later that she had to lock Marie behind a door in the basement where nobody could get a good look at her, on account of curses and all. 

I took a long inhale of my cigarette, allowing my eyes to flutter closed, when I heard the metal door to the hall slam open—followed by the crunching stride of shoes on the pavement. It was not my brother sneaking off to start his honeymoon early, or one of his drunk buddies, or even my father, trying to get away from Aunt Rosie. 

No, it was a waiter, a tall guy in a greenish vest, his brow glistening with sweat from the kitchen. He was freckled, I remember thinking. They crept up his neck, onto his cheeks, and along his forearms, revealed by his rolled-up sleeves, like burning wildflowers, ruddy clouds dotting his skin like poppies. He nearly crashed into me in what may have been anger or frustration, a temperament as red as he was.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, sir. I wasn’t watching.” He muttered hurriedly, running a hand through his orange hair and offering something of an apologetic, gap-toothed smile. 

“You’re fine, pal. No harm done. You good?” 

“Yeah, yeah. Cigarette break. You got a light?” 

I nodded, handing over the book of matches as he pulled a carton of Luckies from his back pocket. He lit one up and gave me a nod, blowing his first puff over his shoulder as if to be polite—as if I were not an expert in the same goddamn bad habit he was.

“Thanks a million. You’re allowed to smoke inside, ya know. Guests are. Not me. I gotta come out here,” he explained.

“Oh, uh, my mom don’t know I do it,” I replied with something of a weak laugh, shrugging my shoulders. I spoke up again only to fill the abrupt silence. “And she also don’t know that I know that she does too. Out the bathroom window, ya know? To be sneaky?”

He laughed the way a movie star laughes, full-bodied and hearty, golden, before blowing out another cloud of smoke. It mingled with mine, and together, it whirled upward toward Aldrin and Armstrong. “It, uh, looks like a nice wedding,” he said. “You with the bride or groom?”

“The groom’s my brother,” I replied. Deciding I really should be less of a brute, then, I stuck out a hand to shake. “Dominic Moretti. People call me Dom.”

“People call me Barty.” He watched me smoke for a moment before flashing a grin, cigarette nestling securely into the space between his teeth. “I bet you they’re missing you in there, Dom. Saw you really cuttin’ a rug earlier.”

“No one even knows I’m gone.” But I knew what he had meant. The band had struck up an old favorite, and I, swaying to the music, found my arms wrapped around the pink chiffon-ed back of bridesmaid Nan Chabowski, twenty-six, pretty, and bored.

For the moment, she did not sway with me, regarding me the way a person regards socks on Christmas. They’re fine, of course, but not what you wanted. Still, I had been paired with her during the wedding, and I guess we were supposed to dance together. Everyone else was. She draped her wrists over my shoulders, not really touching me, but making it look like she was. She kept peering around the room. 

“They landed on the moon safe, you know. We heard on the radio,” I said, trying to strike up some kind of conversation. 

“Uh huh,” Nan replied, glancing over her own shoulder, nose wrinkling. “You haven't seen Joey, have ya? I told him I’d save a dance for him back at the church, but Marie paired him with Rita on account of them both being giants. God, I hate being this petite.” She huffed, turning back to meet my eye level, which, of course, meant that I was also petite.

“No. I ain’t seen him.”

“Oh well,” she hummed, turning back around and continuing to scan the room. “Maybe I can make this work. If he sees us having a real swell time, I can…say, how old did you say you were? You’re Eddie’s younger brother, right?

“I’m nineteen. Today, actually. It’s my birthday.”

“Oh. Teenager.” 

Sighing, I tossed my cigarette to the ground and crushed it beneath the toe of my dress shoe. “I don’t really know that girl, you know. She’s just friends with my brother’s wife. I danced with her to be nice,” I replied, leaning back casually and crossing my arms, like in a Western, but looking more crabby than cool

Barty gave another one of those boisterous laughs at that. I studied the way his whole body seemed to shake with the life of it, and I found I was almost jealous of him, of how he laughed. I could not remember ever laughing like that. “Besides, you should be nice to me,” I added quickly, if only to distract myself from Barty’s form. “I’m a customer. I’m always right, ain’t I? And it’s my birthday.” His eyes widened.

“Wait, what? Your brother picked your birthday to get married? Ain’t that a goddamn bite? Now it’ll be his anniversary, and not your birthday. That’s sorta low. If you don’t mind me saying so, but I guess I already said it.”

“I mean, it was the only day the church had. I’m not sour about it. I get it. Weddings are a big deal and all that.”

“Well, happy birthday, Dominic Moretti.” He met my eye, holding my gaze for only a moment before blowing another cloud of smoke over his shoulder.

“Yeah, thanks. Turns out, you’re the only one to tell me that today.”

“No fooling? I’m sorry. Birthdays are rotten things. I turned nineteen in January myself. I think I’ve hated being nineteen. Eighteen was better. But I’ve always really loved being born in January. Feels like standing in a doorway almost. One year’s done, so the next one starts right up with me. I can count them on myself.”

I offered a nod at that before pointing up at the sky to the moon. More than half of it was covered in shadow, so that we could see only the curve of its milk-white edge jutting out among the stars. “Tonight’s a doorway too, you know,” I said. “They’re up there on the moon. Do you think they landed on the shadow part or the light part?” I clicked my tongue, nostrils flaring. “Who cares, I guess. Buzz Aldrin’s from right here in Jersey, you know. But…before tonight, no one has ever been up there. And now they have. We have. It’s insane, ain’t it? I can’t stand it. Everyone’s home waiting to see them walk out, and we’re all stuck here eating goddamn chicken.” I sniffed, flailing my arms a bit to gesture at the restaurant. “Sorry. It was good chicken.”

Barty laughed. “I don’t give a damn about the chicken, Dom. I didn’t cook it. And, yeah, maybe everyone’s sitting at home, and maybe we’re sitting here, but they’re up there, the people who really matter. So how about that, huh? Not one of us is up there. That’s how it goes. Everyone’s always doing somethin’ better, and nobody ever gets to do what they want,” he continued dully, shrugging his shoulders. For a moment, he glanced back to the hall doors, which still sat shut tight. 

“Oh, uh, what do you want to do then? Other than this, I mean? I guess workin’ other people’s wedding’s isn’t really all that good of a time.” I rambled. “Did you always want to work in a restaurant?”

“I wait tables, Dom. I ain’t a chef or even goddamn maître d,” he scoffed, taking another long drag of smoke. It whirled around his lips. “No, you know what I want? I saw in a magazine once, there’s this monster that lives in a lake in Scotland. Back in the 1930s, this surgeon took a picture of it. An actual doctor, so it’s true. Well, I want to go there and find it myself. Bring it back here to Middlesex County. I mean, maybe I ain’t on the moon, nah, but I can still explore everythin’ here, can’t I?” He seemed to surge with this insistence, shoulders rolling, face growing bright and boyish, enough to make a person believe. He glowed, really, with this kind of light I was noticing for the first time ever, one that could put the crowded moon to blushing shame and make me blush too.

“Well, why don’t ya then?”

“Well, why don’t you go in there and tell everyone it’s your birthday, and they’d better not forget it?”

I did not have an answer to this, so slumping a bit, I simply shrugged my shoulders. Barty’s features softened, as if he had realized he had struck some hidden part of me, the scar of maybe where God had torn my rib out. I was the one to speak up again. “You know, sometimes I think my folks had me just in case my brother got hit by a bus. Not that he was ever gonna die for real or nothing, but just to…you know, sort of be a backup. In case,” I laughed, but I knew I was only half-joking. 

“That was smart of ‘em,” Barty replied, giving my shoulder a light shove, an almost over-friendly gesture. I found myself leaning into the contact, chasing some of his glow as if it could reflect back on me. “Havin’ a backup, I mean. I don’t. I don’t know what’s happening tomorrow. The asshole in there? He’s gonna fire me tonight. No, no, don’t tell me he ain’t. He’s not done it yet, but when I walk back in there, he’s gonna. I broke a dish, and he shouted at me, so I told him to kiss my ass for good luck.” He patted his back pocket, where his cigarette carton was sticking out. “Nobody’ll even notice I’m gone neither. Not really. No one ever notices nothing.”

I knew what he meant. I really knew it. But before I could reply, I watched Barty toss his lit cigarette to the ground in a flurry of smoldering ash. Extending both his arms upward, then, stretching himself tall like the neck of that lake monster, he used both his hands to wave, rolling with the full force of himself, the way folks wave at trains and ships.

“I see ‘em, Dom!” He declared, extending one finger to point. His feet left the ground in that moment, and he seemed to jump, giving into this strange, beautiful abandon. “I see ‘em right up there on the surface! And they’re waving right back at me!” A strong hand shot out to grab the sleeve of my jacket, and he tugged me closer, making me spring upward along with him. I bounded, taking a giant leap of my own, a gasp escaping my throat. And looking up at the moon, I thought I could see them up there too, Neil, and Michael, and even Buzz from Jersey. I jumped and jumped, and I laughed. And I waved.

The whole world, the whole goddamn world was looking at them, and so was I. But they were looking at me. They were looking at me, and so was Barty.

He had fallen back, crossing his arms, smiling from ear to ear with that goddamn gap, watching my routine, my leaping and my waving. And he saw me, I thought, he really saw me. For the very first time in my entire life, someone saw me. He laughed again, and with it, I found myself buzzing.

I fell into him completely, then, wrapping arms around his shoulders and tugging him into an odd, exuberant half-dance. We laughed, and we leapt, all arms and legs. When we leaned in closer, I too could see him, the sublime way the moon played on his face, and I thought, I really let myself think, I mean, that I could have kissed him. And he would have let me.

But we knew who we were. And we knew where we were. I fell back. He did not, not just yet. But Aunt Rosie barrelled through the door to the backroom, looking from me to Barty and then back again. She huffed as we separated. 

“There you are, Dom! What are you, roughhousing? Today of all days? Hurry. We’re all gonna go over to your folks’ and watch the television.”

“Coming, Ro,” I said, and as she disappeared inside again, I met Barty’s eye.

“Hey, you better get going. Tonight’s the big night, right? Yesterday was just yesterday, but tomorrow, everything will be different. I don’t know what’s happening tomorrow.” He fell silent, his brow furrowing. “You know, everythings’ gotta be the way it was first. And then, one day it can all be different. That’s how it goes.”

“Yeah. Anything can happen now, can’t it? ‘Cause they were up there. Maybe.” As I turned to leave, I looked back, managing an uncertain smile. “I hope you catch that monster, Barty. There’s men on the moon, so.…”

“There are. Happy birthday, spaceman.” 

And this would be a moment, I realized. From here on out, there would be everything before it and everything after it. I’d just launched; I wondered when my Eagle would land.