By Grayson Uckele
My eyes lingered on the horizon where dusk had fallen last, where pale lilac still churned with deep pinks and yellows in contrast to the dark purple hue of the sky just over our heads. The hills rolled past our moving car; an ethereal magic settled over the scenery outside and threatened to permeate our metal casing. Normally, I would’ve enjoyed a drive home under a sky bedding down for the night, but there was a tightness in my chest that didn’t wane, not at the first sight of Venus on the horizon, not at the freckling of stars across the lavender sky.
My gaze caught on a familiar pair of horses that were grazing the hillside of the farm we passed routinely on our visits. It was a scene that made a younger version of my sister, Renee, shout emphatically the first time we passed, ages ago. Now we were older, and Renee was four hours away at college. The tightness in my chest pulsed as I wondered what she would say if she had been with us that day.
I glanced over at the driver’s side. My mother had been unusually quiet on the drive home, and I wondered if she was experiencing the same uncomfortable slushing in the pit of her stomach. The kind of discomfort that liquefied and swished back and forth without any promise of purging itself.
“What’d you think of Claire?” I asked in a voice small and scratchy from lack of use.
My mind resurrected images of Claire from this afternoon: her round, smiling face as she crashed into my legs the instant I crossed the threshold. The way she bounced on her heels as she pleaded for me to come look at the new wallpaper in her room. The retreating image of her light brown hair, matted at the crown in that signature seven-year-old way, as she skipped down the hall.
My mother’s eyes quickly flitted over to meet mine before returning to the road. A look I couldn’t place shaded her features.
“She’s getting a lot taller, isn’t she? Turning into the spitting image of her grandfather.”
She was referring to her late brother, Joseph, an uncle I barely remembered. I turned to eye her, suddenly questioning whether I had imagined the darkness that passed over her face a few moments ago. But then I found it, in the profile of her pale green eyes—that resignation, that deep sorrow.
“She is,” I agreed, though my opinion was operating based on the few pictures of Uncle Joseph that I had only seen once or twice. My eyes landed back on the scenery outside the window, my gaze trailing along the sparsely placed neon rest stops we shot past, beacons in the falling light of day.
I was sitting on Claire’s floor as the younger girl chattered, “’Anca, look at my new doll Greg bought me.” She craned on her tiptoes, straining to reach the knit ragdoll that sat on top of her dresser. I was readying to stand up and grab it for her when the hem of her shirt lifted. My eyes caught on the blotchy, dark purple bruises that colored the young girl’s side.
“Claire,” I snapped in surprise, causing her to jump violently. “What’s on your side? Where’d you get those bruises?” I stood on my knees, lifting her hem to get a better look.
Claire’s cheeks colored, looking down over her injury. “I told a secret I shouldn’t have told.”
I felt what was left of my smile fall, a static tingle began to crawl up the back of my calves. “What do you mean, ‘a secret you shouldn’t have told?’” I dropped the hem of her shirt, sitting back to look her in the eye.
She fidgeted, rocking from one side to another, her eyes downcast. “I shouldn’t have told.”
The growing sensation of pinpricks at the first sight of Claire’s bruise swept violently over my legs and throughout my body. It seemed to crash against my chest, urging me into movement. The urge winged around the room, and I imagined it overturning the idle clutter. In my mind, Barbies fall and crayon drawings waft down to settle on the pink carpet.
But the room remained still, breathless. Claire watched me with round eyes, unmoving as if she shared my imagination.
I turned again to my mother in the driver’s seat, residual adrenaline making my resting palms ache.
“You’ve met Greg before, haven’t you?” I asked abruptly, interrupting the silence.
My mother’s pale eyes fell heavily on mine this time before she turned back to face the road. She frowned as she eyed the bumper of the car in front of us.
“I met him at Claire’s birthday party, but I didn’t really talk to him. Why?”
“What’d you think of him?”
She glanced over at me curiously. “He was strange. All of Anna’s boyfriends are strange.” That was all she had to say about it. Anna was my mom’s niece and Claire’s mother.
“Yeah, but Jack wasn’t strange, he was a drug addict.” Jack was Anna’s last boyfriend, only two years in the past.
“Bianca.” My mother’s voice was hard and short, her eyes remaining on the road this time. “We don’t talk about that.”
Only after the breakup did Anna confide in my mother that Jack’s recurring back pain from a long-ago work injury was merely a method of procuring pain killers. It led me to question what was going through Anna’s mind all those mornings she allowed Jack to drive Claire to school while she was at work, a line of questioning I never voiced aloud to my mother but wondered just the same.
I turned away, watching the dying light on the horizon. The sky was almost completely black now. It was only ever on these drives through Upstate that I was able to see the stars, a mesmerizing clustering of light strewn across the dense blue, droplets of the divine flung against canvas.
“Don’t you think it’s odd Greg bought Claire a bike before he even met her?” I tried again.
My mother shifted in her seat now, clearing her throat in agitation. My questions were bothering her, I knew it, but I couldn’t stop.
“He seemed like a strange man, Bianca. I don’t know what you want me to say.” She interrupted herself, cursing under her breath as a car merged unexpectedly in front of us. I waited, watching her profile until she went on, “Sometimes when people are socially maladjusted, they overcompensate with things like gifts.”
My heart sank at her answer. I looked out over the few cars still on the highway. The taillights belonging to the car that had just cut us off raced towards the horizon, blinking out over my line of sight. It appeared as if the sinking sun had swallowed the speeding car whole.
“Do you think that’s why Greg takes Claire out for McDonald’s lunch dates?” I asked, eyes returning to my mother.
Her expression remained impassive. “How’d you know about that?”
“Anna posted about it last week.” Anna was manic with social media, if I was being honest. Just a quick look through her page let the outsider in on a detailed log of her life, right down to retellings of meaningless conversations between herself and Claire.
My mother sighed. “Yeah, she texted me about that. It’s weird, but she said he wants to get to know Claire better.” She shrugged.
“Okay, but Aunt Rachel got remarried to Dan, and he never took Jason out while they were dating. He never bought Jason any gifts, either.” Jason was my age now, and had maintained a healthy relationship with both his father and his stepfather.
“Uncle Dan is a different guy.”
“He’s normal,” I countered.
“He’s normal,” my mother agreed. She didn’t elaborate, though. Her reserve left me feeling cold even though heat blasted through the car vents, fanning my hair back from my face. I shifted in my seat uncomfortably.
The cluster of stars, just now appearing in the distant sky, reminded me of a conversation I had just a few months ago with Claire, our most recent visit before today. Claire had just stuck a glow-in-the-dark galaxy to her ceiling, and she was impatient to show me.
Claire had flicked the lights off, and we’d lain on her floor side by side while our moms talked in the living room. She was pointing out the different stars to me, something she had recently learned in school and something I couldn’t verify because I had completely forgotten everything about the names of the stars and their clusters. It was such a minute piece of knowledge that seemed so important in that moment, faced with Claire’s enthusiasm.
“The Milky Way is dying,” I said suddenly. It was a morbid thing to say to a seven-year-old, but it was all the information I had to offer on the matter.
Claire turned to look at me, her round eyes suddenly serious in the glow from her night-light. “Really?” she asked.
I nodded. “I read that the other day. The Milky Way is on its last leg.” I added with a smile, “It only has four billion years left.” I said it to ease any panic I caused, but she didn’t seem concerned.
Claire turned away, looking back to the ceiling. “Everything ends sometime.”
I balked at the words, a pressure in my chest as I searched her profile. What a strange thing for a kid to say.
When she turned back to meet my gaze, I noticed for the first time how weathered her eyes looked, how old they seemed now, as if she had aged decades in the months between our regular visits. The weight on my chest spread over my shoulders and down the tops of my arms, washing my nerves numb.
“What?” she had asked in response to my staring, calling sensation back to my body.
“Nothing.” I’d shaken my head.
It had been three months into Greg and Anna’s relationship at the time.
“Are you cold? I’m sweating, but we can turn the heat up. I’ll just take my jacket off—” my mom asked, one hand going to the dials on the vent between us.
“I’m fine.” But I didn’t turn to meet her gaze.
She said nothing else.
That afternoon, from my place in the doorway of Claire’s bedroom, I had gestured to the ceiling and asked where the stick-on galaxy had gone.
“She took my stepladder and peeled them all down on her own.” Anna leaned around the corner of the hallway to tell me, having overheard my question.
I smiled. “Really? All on her own?” I glanced down at Claire and nudged her shoulder. Claire made a face in response.
“Really. I guess she’s too old for it now, said something about a dying galaxy.” One of Anna’s eyebrows lifted with humor. When I only smiled, she turned back to the living room to repeat what she had just said to my mother.
I looked down at Claire, but she avoided my eyes.
“Why’d you take it down?” I asked her quietly.
“I just didn’t want to see it anymore. You said it was dying, anyway.” But her voice cracked when she said it, as if she were unsure of her own response.
Anna had posted about Greg regularly babysitting while she was working late, and I wondered if Claire was as excited to show Greg her galaxy stickers as she had been to show me.
I cleared my throat against my train of thought.
“Mom.” My voice sounded sure, despite the thud of my heart against my chest. “Renee thinks Greg’s a predator.”
The silence that fell between us was thick, palpable; with each second, it grew in its intensity, in its fervor, as if separating itself from us and becoming its own entity. In the darkness I felt its presence solidify, felt its heavy eyes on the back of my head, watching the scene of its creation play out.
“Renee isn’t here. She knows nothing about this.” My mother’s sharp voice was enough to cut into the entity, sharp enough to cause it to burst into shards of chaos.
“Renee’s seen the posts. She’s taking a class about—” I began, my voice raising to a yell.
“I don’t care what class she’s taking, Bianca, she isn’t here.”
“We need to call CPS.” My voice was suddenly hard.
My mother gave a forced laugh in response. “And say what? You two have a feeling Greg’s a predator? There’s no evidence.”
“Claire has a bruise,” I told her flatly.
She jerked around to look at me. “She told you Greg gave it to her?”
I deflated. “No, she said a classmate hit her for telling a secret.”
“Then what, Bianca? What do you want me to do?”
“There’s something weird about it, mom. It’s not right. She’s lying.” I was quiet now, watching her from my side of the car. “Call CPS and they can investigate.”
“And what if you’re wrong? What if I call and there’s nothing? Anna will never forgive me.” Her pale eyes glittered strangely in the glow from the dashboard. “She’s my brother’s daughter.”
A few beats of silence passed between us before I said, “But what if I’m right?”
There was no reply.
My eyes went to the residual streaks of light where the sun had just sunk below the horizon. Threads of color gripped the dense navy that overtook the sky, stubborn tentacles that clung to the dark in baby blues and golden-hued yellows. In a matter of seconds, I knew that, too, would give way to the expanding night sky.
I was only eleven the day Claire was born, but it was the only birth I’d ever witnessed. Claire hadn’t entered the world screaming, she came into it quietly, as if she had been hoping to go unnoticed despite the crowd awaiting her. The Upstate nurses had other plans, though. The stout women formed a half-circle around a side table where they roughly maneuvered her, stamping a shot into each sole of her feet. It was only then that Claire sucked in a breath and let out a scream that seemed never to cease; it echoed even until that afternoon. The sound stole the breath from the room. As Claire was returned to Anna’s arms, I remember thinking that this puffy purple thing was ours, now.
“Do you remember how Anna’s marriage ended?” my mother asked.
Anna cheated on Claire’s father with her parolee, Jack. She lost her job. She kicked Claire’s dad out. He never fought it, he just left. He stayed in contact with Claire, came around for the holidays, but that was it.
“If we’re wrong, they’ll find that at the very least, and that’s enough for them to take Claire away,” my mother went on. “That accusation could blow up the family. Imagine how embarrassing that would be for Aunt Rachel, Uncle Dan… Jason? It’s a small town. Anna’s already embarrassed them enough.”
“What about Claire?”
“We can’t do anything about that right now.” Her voice was hard, her decision made.
The sun had completely gone down, now, no trace of it left in the sky. The familiar sprawl of stars littered the darkness just above the hills beside us. I watched my reflection in the window as I said aloud, “The Milky Way is dying.” I saw movement in the window, just over my reflection’s shoulder. My mother was looking at the back of my head.
“What?”
“The Milky Way is dying. It’s on its final leg,” I repeated.
“How do you know that?” she asked, her tone rising in pitch.
“I read it in an article a while ago. It only has four billion years left.”
She scoffed, a sound of relief. “It’s not dying if it has four billion years left.”
I turned to her then. “Four billion years isn’t long at all, for a galaxy.”
Her eyes left mine, attention returning to the road ahead of us.
“Well, everything ends at some point, Bianca.”
Grayson Uckele is a writer based in the Philadelphia area of Pennsylvania and a recent alumna of the Creative Writing graduate program at Emerson College. He is also a past contest finalist in The Pinch Literary Awards. His story, “The Milky Way is Dying” is a story that details a complex family dynamic and highlights the danger in passivity.
