Autumn Everywhere
By Cathy Ulrich
The astronaut isn’t an astronaut yet when her mother dies. Her mother will never get to say my daughter the astronaut. Her mother is a quiet on the other end of the line and the astronaut saying mother, are you there.
The astronaut is away at school when her mother dies. The astronaut has a stack of books beside her bed and a dorm mate who cuts photos of boy bands from magazines like she is a middle school girl, puts them up on the mirror that stretches across their room. The astronaut feels haunted by her own reflection. The dorm mate is always smiling, covering the mirror bit by bit with pictures of pretty boys with perfect hair.
The astronaut has been writing letters to a girl from her neighborhood that she doesn’t dare send.
I have been thinking of your hands.
I have been missing your hands.
The astronaut buys postcards at the campus store, mails them bare but for the address of the girl she will someday marry.
The astronaut watches the leaves turn when she walks across campus, the yellowing, oranging of them, the skeleton-whisper of their rustle. Boys from her classes are always coming up behind her, asking if they can carry her books, asking if she’d like to study together. Their tongues linger on the slither of the s.
They say: I’ve seen you in the mornings, running.
They say: Where are you running to?
The astronaut smiles. The astronaut is good at smiling at boys; they always end up smiling back.
I’m not running anywhere, she says.
The astronaut’s father wants her to book a flight home when her mother dies. His voice hitches on the line, and the astronaut pretends it’s just the distance.
I’ll drive, she says.
You won’t make it in time, he says.
I’ll drive, she says, all night.
The car is from high school. The astronaut paid for it with money from tutoring, handing a stack of twenties to the neighbor selling it, sorry about the cracked windshield, but I checked all the tires. It was the first thing the astronaut thought of as hers, hers alone.
She parked it in front of the girl down the street’s house, come ride with me, and the astronaut watched the girl dip her fingers out the passenger window, thought now we can be free.
When the astronaut gets home — she thinks of it as home yet, home still, and will for a while, until her father sells the place and moves south, stops answering her calls — her grandparents are there, and her grandmother is crying in an arid way, shoulders shaking, face twisted.
She says: oh, my baby, and the astronaut turns her face away, looks out the window.
Oh, she says, it’s autumn here, too, and her grandmother embraces her, tight, tight, tight, your mother would be so proud.
The service is a small service. The astronaut winds and unwinds her program in her hands. The photo on the cover is of her mother when she was young, her mother when she was a girl.
I hadn’t seen this one before, the astronaut says.
You resemble her, says her grandmother.
After the service, the astronaut takes the program in the mortuary restroom, flattens it on the sink counter, holds it next to her face in the mirror.
Someone knocks on the door, are you all right in there?
The astronaut turns on the water in the sink, drops the program in the garbage can.
I’m fine.
The astronaut’s father had the mortuary limo take them to the chapel, has it take them home. The astronaut sits in the limo seat beside him in the suit dress her grandmother picked. She has chewed off the red of her lipstick, puckers the fabric of her skirt clutching it in her hands.
Her grandmother says: Will you stay?
The astronaut says: I shouldn’t get behind on my studies.
She rolls down the back window with the push of a button, drifts her hand outside. The girl from down the street is standing on the corner when they turn onto the road, like she has been waiting. She sees the limo, the astronaut’s reaching hand, stretches her own hand out, curls her fingers up in a small, light fist.
Is she waving, says the astronaut’s grandmother.
No, says the astronaut.
She says: No, she’s taking my hand.
About the Author:
Cathy Ulrich paid for her second car with a handful of twenty-dollar bills that the seller counted back one by one. Her work has been published in various journals, including Cream City Review, Puerto Del Sol and Black Warrior Review.
About Weekly Flash Prose and Poetry:
CutBank Online features one work of flash prose or prose poetry every Monday. Submissions are free and open year-round. Send us your best work of 750 words or less at https://cutbank.submittable.com/submit.