Lost Star

July 1995

When I was twelve, my mother met my step-father, Jim. They stayed together for seven years, at the end of which I was over him. In the Bible, debt is forgiven after seven years. That’s in the Old Testament anyway. In the New Testament your sins are forgiven by Jesus so now we can have a Wall Street and debt that will never forget you or let you forget it. For him and me, step-father and step-daughter, we stopped as easily as we started. The seven year contract was over.

He was a good man, mostly gentle and kinder than earlier candidates for the role had been. He played his guitar and sang nights in bars around the Southern Oregon region, smoked weed and slept during the day. He had few ambitions beyond what he already had. In my adolescent eyes he had very few redeeming features, except one. He was the landscaper for Ginger Rogers.

The summer after the two met we moved to his dusty property in White City, Oregon. We rode with him around the small town in his green pickup with no key for the ignition, just a screwdriver left on the seat to turn the starter. Ginger Rogers had just died the year prior and the estate was in the process of being settled. He was still occasionally going up to her property in the foothills to maintain the land. Often he would teach me about how to do small landscaping tasks. He taught me how to plant flowers and I filled the flowerbed in front of the trailer with riotous marigolds, so tight they would jostle in the smallest breeze.

One afternoon, as the time he spent caretaking for her property came to an end, he took us with him. Jim, my mom, my brother Daniel and I packed into my mom’s Camaro and rolled through the hot sun. Picking up Snapples along the way, we wound along mountain roads that I would spend my early driving years trying to remember. We took a turn up an unmarked drive and approached a closed, wrought iron fence. Jim, with his long grey hair falling out from under his safari hat, punched in the code and the gate swung slowly back.

The silent house did not feel empty, but abandoned. We tip-toed through and spoke in hoarse whispers. Jim told stories about how Ginger would refuse to be seen without her makeup on.

Night fell and we stripped down to the bathing suits we wore under our clothes. Slipping into the pool in her backyard, Daniel and I played, mom and Jim talked companionably. Soon the stars rose and shone brilliantly in the mountain darkness. The smell of burnt grass cooled and turned sweet like oatmeal cookies. I leaned my head back against the concrete edge and let my body float up to rest on the surface. Watching the stars, I imagined aliens and UFO’s hovering out of sight in the solar system, but watching. A bright star, in the center of the dark sky, smoldered and winked, fluttered and sighed through the evening.