Thirty-One Light Years Away
by Michele Finn Johnson
In January, my puppy and I meet the Astronaut and his chihuahua, Buttercup, at the dog park and by March, the four of us are self-isolating together in my one-bedroom apartment. My mutt, Greenspan, loves Buttercup. I believe I may love the Astronaut, although long-term he insists he’s not bound to Earth, that this planet’s a hothouse and everyone should have an escape plan.
The Astronaut comes with certain quirks—for example, he wears his spacesuit from daylight until bedtime, and he only lifts his helmet’s shield to eat rehydratable foods like powdered eggs and dried mangoes. Occasionally, he’ll peel his helmet off entirely to kiss me, but the hiss of his escaping air supply doesn’t conjure much romance. He says it’s important for him to remain prepared for duty. What’s the likelihood of a space mission during a pandemic? I ask. I’m an accountant; I value percentages. But the Astronaut just shrugs his heavily insulated shoulders, his face hidden behind an amber-tinted shield.
Boxes from Amazon appear at my doorstep on a daily basis. The Astronaut keeps himself busy unpacking their contents—valves and regulators and umpteen meters that cast a hollow glow on my white walls. The Astronaut’s apparatus coagulates at the outer-edges of my apartment; what used to be floor-to-ceiling windows are now half-obscured. Buttercup and Greenspan appear comforted by these new inner walls, spending most days curled up together within coils of hoses.
The Astronaut is exquisite in bed. I almost forget that he’s an astronaut when he’s not wearing his spacesuit. His angel-pale face catches the moonlight and illuminates our bedroom—such a shame that it’s usually hidden away and pressurized. When we lie naked together, he reminds me that we are all made up of elements of outer space. Touching you is like touching the universe, he says, and then his eyes gaze off as if he’s already re-donned his helmet. This is how I know I will always be his second love, my sacrifice for exploration.
The Astronaut feels it’s critical to mount his flight instrumentation to the walls surrounding my kitchen table, i.e., my home office. Panels of knobs and digital readouts now wallpaper my kitchen nook; the Astronaut spends most of his days encased by the fake inner workings of a vessel I’ve only seen in scratchy film footage from 1969. I must emphasize this: mine is a very small, one-bedroom apartment; I fear the Astronaut’s detritus has decreased its square footage by 42 percent.
Since I can no longer occupy my kitchen nook, I take my laptop and work from my bedroom closet, the one space with no astronaut clutter. I’m on a Zoom call with my boss and seven other accountants when the Astronaut walks into my bedroom.
My boss is a hawk. “Suzette? Is that an astronaut behind you?”
The Astronaut freezes; I’m certain his U.S. flag patch is visible on screen.
“Nope, that’s my exterminator,” I say, proud of my quick thought process.
But later, when the Astronaut lifts his shield to eat a thermostabilized chicken casserole, his eyes are vacant.
“My love?”
He refuses to speak.
In bed that night he turns away from me, and I know this is what it will be like, my future life with the Astronaut when he’s off orbiting in the unseen world, thirty-one light years away, and I am still here, solid and unmoving and alone.
Greenspan and Buttercup must sense our tension; the pups rustle out of their air hose nest and hop onto the bed. Buttercup’s too tiny to make it in one giant leap, but he knows to first propel himself onto the decorative floor pillows, then to the bench at foot of our bed, and from there it is easy for him to find Greenspan, for the two of them to nuzzle into the void between the Astronaut and me, to fill it with their puppy breath, to remind me that I am here, we are here, on an irreplaceable planet.
Michele Finn Johnson’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in A Public Space, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, DIAGRAM, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her work was selected for the 2019 Best Small Fictions anthology, won an AWP Intro Journals Award in nonfiction, and has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. Michele lives in Tucson and serves as contributing editor at Split Lip Magazine. Find her online at michelefinnjohnson.com and on twitter at @m_finn_johnson.
