Nobody at NASA gave a goddamn about the weather in Jersey. This fact, as true and as simple as it was, had not stopped my Aunt Rosie from pacing around the parlor all morning and pressing her face to the front window in search of thunderstorms. My mother had yelled at her for smearing rouge on the glass, and she, of course, had yelled right back. And soon, everybody was yelling.
It was the day of my brother Eddie’s wedding, the day of the moon landing, and rain meant a lot of things. It meant a shower of good fortune, pouring out from God Himself, Amen, onto the newlyweds, but it also meant the destruction of our poor astronauts (one of whom was a good Jersey boy)—spacemen, who were already so far outside our atmosphere that nothing happening here could do anything to them. It didn’t matter, though, not to Rosie. They would be struck by lightning, and they would plummet into the Atlantic, and they would die, and we’d lose the race.
But it didn’t rain. It was goddamn muggy, though, muggy enough to cause the streamers tied to the back of Eddie and Marie’s limousine to half-melt and make colors streak down the white, but it didn’t rain.
I stepped out the reception into the parking lot that evening to light up a cigarette, a loner from the pocket of my too-tight tuxedo. The restaurant itself was empty by now; I could see the tables through the windows. Marie’s father had only rented the backroom because he was a cheap-ass. But even though the party was starting to fade, cousins and friends rushing home to watch whatever was going to happen happen, I could still hear the stragglers through the closed door.
Striking up a match from the book I’d snagged from the front counter, I watched the smoke furl upward toward the moon. They were up there right now. That was goddamn insane. They were up there, and I was standing here, looking up at them. And maybe some part of me really could reach them like this, I thought. Maybe they would see my cigarette smoke, and they would know I was here. So few people really did.
“You all better hurry. You gotta get there before Marie does,” Rosie yammered, rushing out my parents’ front door after my uncle, who was waving his arms at her. “I know, Ron. I know. Start the goddamn car, would you? Listen, Eddie, if you see her in the dress, it’s bad luck. Bad, bad luck. Curse on your house. You’ll never have children, and it’ll break my heart. Get to the church, get inside, and God help you, don’t look out any windows.”
And so we did. That afternoon, me and Eddie and the three other groomsmen, only one of whom was good-looking, squeezed into the back of a Lincoln Continental. They had shoved past me shouting for the radio. And climbing in last, I watched from my place in the rear as the four of them leaned over the front like gargoyles.
The chauffeur, which I guess is what you call a person in this line of work, was actually wearing one of those little caps you see on television. He already had the broadcast running, and we sat there on the curb together and listened.
“We’re gonna be late! They’re gonna yell at us, Eddie.” But no one paid me any mind because, just like that, it was really happening. The radio counted