Creative Writing (Short Story): “Cassiopeia”

Translated from the Spanish by the author

“Cassiopeia”

Summer only blurs one direction. The shrubs, wrought-iron benches, cobblestone retaining wall of one public-park walk-talk only gets vaguer upon remembering and re-remembering, compressed into a single evening, compressed into five seconds. Irene held Sebastian’s hand.

“This seems like a good spot,” he said.

Irene trained her ears on the music of the crickets. She rubbed a hand on a forearm, not unforcefully, but her voice didn’t waver. “Mmm… d’accord.” She looked back at Sebastian. “What was I saying?”

Somehow, he was yards away, enchanted by a forty-foot live oak. “Look at this!”

Irene looked at the boy, and then down, at her empty hand. She hadn’t felt him let go.

Sebastian went on musing from the base of the tree. “I can’t believe this. Look!” He was sort of talking to Irene, but mostly to himself. “When I was a kid, I used to spend my summers climbing these bad boys. Live oaks like this grew in the alley.”

To Irene, the cricket-song and the boy’s voice sounded good together. It wasn’t harmony, she thought, but something like it. Agreement, maybe. She examined the back of her hand, tracing the finger-muscles with her eyes. When she made a fist, they went away. When she spread it flat, they protruded. “Ah, I remember. My parents.”

Sebastian didn’t seem to hear her. “At what age do we climb our last tree?” His voice took on a flavor of tongue-in-cheek sing-song. “At what age do we quit dreaming?”

“Are you listening to me?” Irene hoped it was tongue-in-cheek, anyway. She tapped her foot once on the day-baked concrete.

Sebastian turned to face her. His head was obscured by the thin leaves’ shade, but Irene saw his low-tops clearly. They looked yellow in the late-evening light. His voice called out, louder than hers: “Are you listening to me? I’m speaking of the great tragedies in life.”

“Be serious,” Irene said. She tried to sound exasperated, but couldn’t, really.

Sebastian scanned their section of the park. It seemed too big for the two of them, but no one else was around. Not far away, he spotted a bench he liked, and walked over. “Here, then?” and sat without waiting for an answer. Irene was still yards away. The two of them plus the tree made a triangle, Sebastian thought, but he didn’t know what kind. Love, maybe. He blew a puff of air out of his nose, silently laughing to himself, eyes on the live oak.

Irene didn’t answer. She stood where she had been standing, looking at him expectantly.

Sebastian turned to meet her gaze. Leaning back into the bench, he tapped his fingers on the wrought-iron armrest. “O, the feeling of cold steel on skin: the aphrodisiac of the suburban age.”

Without a word, Irene walked over and sat, carefully. She leaned back and tilted her head up, inclining toward the sun’s few dregs left. Stars were beginning to poke through, she could tell, but without her contacts, she couldn’t tell much more.

“Looking for Cassiopeia?” Sebastian asked, nudging.

“I can’t stand you,” Irene replied, craning her upturned neck side to side, deliberately not looking at Sebastian. He sighed and brought his hands to rest on his thighs, making not-unforceful impact.

“Okay, okay. Let’s talk,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

Tenderly, Sebastian took her hand in his. Then, he took in her eyes. For a moment, he said nothing. Then, “So, what were we talking about?”

Irene sighed, but with smiling eyes, as if a last-second railroad switch had been thrown from LAUGH to DON’T LAUGH. “About my parents,” she said.

“About your parents…”

“And how to tell them.”

“And how to tell them.” Sebastian said, faux-lost. “And we’re telling them…”

“About us,” Irene said, with an air of saintly patience.

Sebastian mimed a Eureka! with his eyes and brought his hand to rest under his chin, Thinker-style. “Right… about us. And why are we telling them? They’re good people, Irene. Maybe better to spare them a saga of passion, adventure…”

Irene snorted impatiently. “Please.”

“Seriously, how come? What’s the harm in keeping us between us?”

“I’m tired of keeping us secret, Sebastian. Is that so hard to understand?”

Sebastian returned his right hand to her left, bringing his other up toward her face. Slowly, he caressed her cheek with his thumb, inviting her to look deep into his eyes. He cleared his throat, and, in a loving voice:

“Non… Non je parle français.”

Irene held his gaze. Her eyebrows tried to furrow, but couldn’t. She tried to avert her eyes protest, but couldn’t. She compromised by saying nothing.

Sebastian sighed. “I understand. Kiss me?”

That did the trick—total furrow. “Excuse me?” she said, indignant.

Sebastian held his hand up, commanding the foot of air between their faces. He extended a skinny index finger upward, then twirled it around to point at her lips. “Kiss?” He wheeled it around, pointing at his own. “Me?”

Irene stood up from the bench. “Think I’d rather kiss someone who I can talk to like an adult,” she said, exasperated.

Quickly, he stood up too. “Okay, okay… wait. We can talk,” Sebastian said, looking off at the live oak.

“Oh, can we?” she said, her voice revealing the beginnings of an anger.

“As you wish, your majesty.” He watched the anger melt away as he sat back down. After a silent moment between them, her standing, him sitting, she joined him on the bench.

“Très bien,” she said, in a French that sounded much better than his.

“So…” he said, softly. “How to tell your parents.”

“You’ve got it.”

“Well, what do you think? Are you gonna talk to your mom? Or Jeff? Them together, maybe?”

She lifted her thighs to stow her hands under; it seemed like an attempt to keep them warm in the summer dusk.

“I think Jeff would take it better,” Irene said, thinking out loud. “But if I tell him before I tell her, I swear she’ll hate me forever.”

Sebastian threw up his hands. “Well, why would she so kindly bestow upon you a new father if she didn’t want you to treat him like your father?”

“I don’t know.” She looked off at the horizon.

He looked off with her. “It’s tyranny you live under.”

“Like Napoleon.”

“D’accord.”

Irene wanted to smile but had other matters to attend to. “But how to tell them.” This was supposed to be a recentering sort of statement, but as soon as she pronounced it, it had the opposite effect. All she wanted was to think about anything else. She looked up toward the darkening sky. Sebastian, for his part, did the same. In truth, he liked to do what she did.

Irene sensed it. “Looking for Cassiopeia?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll help you.”

The two searched for her in the same sky.

Sebastian broke a short silence. “Who is Cassiopeia, anyway?

“She was an ancient queen of Ethiopia. The most beautiful woman in the world, they say.”

“Found her!”

With an excited twitch, Irene craned her neck to look where he was looking. “Where, where? I can’t find her!”

“Look a little harder. Here, I’m looking right at her.”

Slowly, Irene lowered her head. She turned to look at Sebastian. He had been looking at her, waiting for her to notice.

“And I think she found me too,” he said. For a few seconds, they sat there, silent, content with having found each other’s eyes.

“Sure,” Irene said.

“Sure, what?”

“I’ll kiss you.”

“Kiss? Me?”

“I thought you wanted to talk!”

“I’m tired of talking.”

“D’accord.”

The silence returned, this time infused with mutual anticipation. Both remained still.

“Well?” Irene said.

“I’m waiting,” Sebastian replied.

“This was your idea!”

“I’m tired of doing the kissing,” Sebastian said, waxing romantic. “I’ve always wanted to be the kissed.”

Without fuss, Irene inclined her head back up toward the sky. “Keep dreaming, then.”

Sebastian took her hand, placing his inside, and moved the back of his palm up toward her lips. “At what age do we quit dreaming?”

Irene didn’t seem to notice, or perhaps pretended not to. Sebastian raised his head up, mirroring hers. He lowered their joined hands, but didn’t let go. Later that night, he did, but he couldn’t remember when.