She began as a group of molecules from a supernova in the Andromeda galaxy. Through the beauty of chance and undeniable probability, she became a descendant of the primordial ooze that crawled from the turbulent ocean; a living organism that craved femurs and a spinal cord. She witnessed the diversification of species as the thunder that accompanied a lightning bolt which had turned the bottom layer of a sandy beach into amorphous glass. She climbed trees and stood beneath them, until eventually, she was Elizabeth Whitehurst.
Elizabeth was Eliza to most, and Beth to a few. She had five toes on her right foot, but the second from the left was slightly webbed to the third. The moles on her back were stacked, reminiscent of the piles of stones one would find on trails beside the sea, their origin a mystery. Eliza’s hair couldn’t quite be identified as curly, but in her preteen years she swore that it was pure frizz.
Elizabeth was born to Alexander and Mary, a couple from Redondo Beach and Lynwood, California, respectively. She was the first of three, a position that would have given her the responsibility of a role model, but her sisters were such whirlwinds from birth that she had no true influence over their behavior. She seemed an afterthought to the both of them, the warning that was only heard after the damage was done.
She met him two weeks before her fifteenth birthday. The frizz of her hair had settled to gentle waves and she had learned to joke that her toes were the evidence of her ancestral line from merpeople.
He was broad and tanned, with hair shaved on the sides and thick curls on top. His eyes were close to black, and predetermined crow’s feet framed his thick lashes. His hands seemed larger than life when he gripped the wheel of his Ford Bronco, the veins full of rushing blood - thick and strong. He was eighteen.
Roger Loring was born the second of two sons to Peter and Lana, parents that had grown as weeds do, through concrete, in the center of Los Angeles.
Beth couldn’t tell you where she met Roger, or even when, but in an instant he had become an irrevocable part of her. Their nights were blurs of hot breath and shaking hands, their days full of subtle adventures. She loved the way he sang every time he washed his hands, and hated that he refused to wash sauce pans.
He refused to acknowledge his anger, and it would come out like bottle rockets whenever her unconscious commands sparked his temper. He ran his fingers through her hair and kissed each mole on her back, thinking that they represented a life she had lived. He yelled when she whined, and she cried when he shut her out.
They said their vows on a Tuesday morning, and made love in the limousine on the way to the reception. She had rice stuck in her hair for three days, he was replayed the image of her in white for weeks.
She found him in the bathtub, tears streaming down his face from the magnitude of the unknown, dripping into the cloudy water that had gone cold. She submerged herself without a second thought and held him, feeling a connection she could not explain. His hands cupped her growing midriff and felt eased by the gentle electric current emanating from her smile.
Lucy was born on a Sunday, the sky lit with bolts and the air thick with thunder that made Beth feel at home - a mysterious feeling of peace in the chaos of the storm. Lucy’s eyes were darker than her father’s and her ringlets would fall to her back by the time she was six years old. She had her aunt’s untamable energy as well as the quiet strength of her mother. Lucy had a rumble in her voice and tulips in her touch.
Eliza picked up cigarette smoking, rarely lighting up, but inhaling three in a row when she did. She had grown accustomed to the way he would reach for her in slumber – searching for her warmth. He held Lucy and felt small. He had shrunk since her birth, caught between two souls that he knew he would never fully understand. He dreamt of counting rings in fallen redwood trees, and the spiral of monarch tongues.
Lucy had to be pulled from not quite frozen ponds every winter, as she had little patience for the process that allowed her to skate, gliding along as if she were free from the earthly forces that dictated her movement. She was unforgiving when it came to imperfection, and Roger began to worry that she held too much in the furrows of her brow.
Roger’s brother died in February. Elizabeth found him in the car this time, at the end of the street, the phone in his lap, his eyes glazed over. Her sparks failed to ignite him.
Beth’s father went missing in October. Roger hid his surprise that his wife could break the way she did, a little at a time, then all at once. She crumbled in front of him, shattered panes of glass that were too jagged to hold too close. She had to be approached from certain angles, soothed in a particular direction.
Lucy turned eighteen on a Friday, they drove her to the university dormitory a week and a half later. Roger lost a part of himself as he saw her eyes tear and turn away. She had hoarded so much in those furrows over the years that they had developed into caverns, yet to be explored, full of what could have been.
Elizabeth had begun to rebuild herself, appearing to him as a great rose window in a gothic cathedral. She was every color of the rainbow, and every bit beautiful as she was broken. They held each other tightly now, and without hesitation, with the winter breeze whistling through the window.
He found her first gray hair when she was taking out the garbage, the dog jumping at her feet. It hid behind her right ear, wound tightly and closer to silver than white.
She smelled the perfume on a Saturday morning, the pressed shirt stuffed in the middle of the hamper.
He found her in the bathtub, tears creating ripples in the pristine water. He sat on the tile beside her, his heart breaking with every shiver that shook her spine. He pressed his face against hers and thought that her electricity had never been so prevalent before that moment. She was thousands of rings wiser than he was – Roger was a sapling fighting for sunlight beneath the canopy of a soul that had known time as an ever-changing entity, unmeasurable by the human ego.
Time passed violently. It seemed to assault Roger every chance it got, each time leaving him with a stone colored battle wound on his temple, scars that reached for the predetermined crow’s feet that had come to fruition.
She forgave him the day she heard him speaking to Lucy in hushed tones on the phone. He was recounting the days of their youth, and he remembered the exact date they had met. There had been a power outage in the high school that day and they had both been sent to the main office to find lanterns. Roger had been scared of the dark, but Elizabeth’s light had unconsciously lit the hallway for him, casting her silhouette across his chest.
Lucy died in November. By pure chance and undeniable probability, she fell through the ice while skating on a pond, yet to be fully explored by frost.
Elizabeth’s hair was entirely silver now. Roger had developed a drinking problem. They swore more than they slept, he had become accustomed to the couch cushions at two in the morning. Her eyes had run dry. She loved the way he left her alone to wash sauce pans and hated that he sang every time he washed his hands.
She read horror novels and woke up in his arms on the couch every morning by seven thirty. He kissed her forehead, and the sharp tang of whiskey allowed her eyes to tear for their lost child and the cavern between them. July rain made her smile, but tulips were stones dropped in her chest cavity – echoing in tones that would have been wails had she had the will to weep.
They took Argentine Tango lessons and she bought a red dress that gradually spent more time on the floor beside the nightstand than on her body. She began to fear a life without him by her side, and read thick texts regarding theories of the afterlife. He started to leave notes for her around the house, a scribe of the hope that remained.
They died two days a part. One peacefully in her sleep, the other on the front porch with a glass of bourbon trickling through his broken heart. Their bodies were cremated in August.
Elizabeth and Roger became the vibrations of text messages between secret lovers. They were raindrops that fell from a cloudless sky and puddled in the Nile. They were decibels at a folk concert in Colorado, candle smoke in the bedroom of virgins.
They were the tidal waves on an uncharted island in the Indian Sea, and monsoon winds blowing over Calcutta. They became the disturbances in the ocean caused by movements of kelp two stories tall. They shone like the flashes of scales in a school.
They were the mist under the Golden Gate Bridge, and the moan of an ancient building in the night. They were the words of hope whispered by a nation, the crystals on the panes of planes, the chill surrounding tropospheric bacteria, and the powerless breeze on the moon.
There was a new star in the Andromeda galaxy. Scientists on the third planet from the sun called it Lucifyar 27359 – Lucy for short. Summer on Earth that year had a record amount of thunderstorms. The redwoods flourished, and tulips grew at their bases. Frost came a month early.
***
How mundane it is to define star dust by the confines of a human life.
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