Beneath the light of the comet

The summer ET was released on video I was first in line at the rental store - itching to watch it - having been deemed too young to see the original cinema release. Five viewings over one weekend confirmed it was more than just a film. From sparking a BMX obsession, to our family make up replicating the one in the film; experiencing it felt like belonging, at a time when our fractured family unit had shattered this comfort. Weeks later on a blazing December morning, as mum’s Holden pulled up outside a small house in Hanmer Springs we couldn’t help noticing how much the surroundings looked like the street from the film, dubbing our new home ET Close. There are few Christmases I remember with such clarity as that first away from dad, but ripping open paper dotted with Santa clauses on surfboards, fingers quivering with anticipation, the memory turned from sour into sweet. I’ve never since felt such reward from dreams coming true as Spielberg’s masterpiece being in my hands; mine to own, to watch over and over. With a younger sister and big brother, there was no denying I was Elliott in this scenario. I just needed to find my ET.

Forty three non-exhaustive viewings in and we were still obsessed. Nights cooled and darkened with each watch as summer drifted towards a balmy autumn. Despite the lack of real chill, the three of us kids snuggled in front of a blazing log fire, just in our terry towelling shorts, to watch the film unfold again and again. I cried every single time, yearning for it to be more than a story. It felt as if my wish were coming true when the news on the only channel we had proclaimed smugly that whilst the northern hemisphere was reportedly due poor sightings of Halley’s Comet, New Zealand’s south island would be a prime spot to see this celestial rarity.

Conflating Halley’s Comet with the arrival of a friendly extra terrestrial wasn’t a stretch for an imaginative and impressionable ten year old. I still had classmates who believed a fat man in a red suit delivered them presents once a year so I look back without judgement on my younger self’s belief. Combining the advent of the comet with my naieve ET obsession and reckless sense of adventure, I was certain: the stars were aligning. There were just two issues to deal with and I scrawled them both on my jotter pad at school that morning:

* One, my aforementioned adventurous nature had landed me with a cast on my leg after a BMX trick went askew;

* Two, partly due to the cast, partly due to having no other support, my mother had invited my seventy six year old grandfather to come and stay with us.

As old people went, Gramps was pretty solid. Sure he smelt musty and had wiry grey hairs protruding from his nose and ears, but he’d been the first one to notice and nurture my passion for the night sky. He bought me a telescope when dad thought stargazing asinine, unsuitable, and Gramps showed me the star grandma had been named after. But I had a plan and, as I whined to my mother, Gramps had a habit of loitering.

‘Be nice,’ mum had said, her voice in the tired tone that had started with the affair and not yet ended. ‘It’s his birthday and he misses grandma terribly. He gets so lonely this time of year.’

I’d been too young to realise she was speaking an ultimate truth. I thought it a mere excuse for why we were being babysat. Grabbing my crutches, I’d limped down to the garage, ready to enact the next part of my plan.

Maia was too old to be in a pram, but mum had been manic when her forever family home had sold thirteen years into her marriage - ‘thirteen, unlucky for some’ she’d chirped, grinning, though the mascara streaks on her face told me it wasn’t funny - and she’d made her way to her new home, paying the moving men to take everything and deposit it in our new garage. Rooting around I hopped from an old car engine over to a grubby bureau that uncle Dag had dumped on us, then spied Maia’s old pram in a corner. Tearing the bassinet off using a pair of dad’s pliers, I finally had the bare chassis ready to go, and a test spin of the garage floor told me I had everything I needed.

Mid-April was the halfway point through autumn, but its chill hadn’t made itself known until that weekend. I welcomed it. Gramps had taught me clouds kept the warmth in and clouds didn’t play a role in my scheme. Mum was working late at a local bar Friday and Saturday nights and rather than notice how much this shrank and consumed her, I instead focused on what I knew: this created the ideal window for my plan. Whispered from my bottom bunk to where Ryan lay up top, the details were shared, and I detected a note of admiration in his tone, which he tried to downplay. Finally, he thought he’d found the rub.

‘But what about your leg, doodle butt?’ Ryan sounded triumphant; he’d undone my dastardly scheme.

‘Leave that to me,’ I said, trying to sound mysterious. I waved his comments away but he wouldn’t be able to see my hand moving at night. Hanmer Springs was a depth of darkness we hadn’t known before. Christchurch had hardly been a bustling metropolis, but by comparison to our new home it was as dazzling as New York City. One more sleep, I whispered, facing through the gap in my curtains to the star that pierced a hole in the sky. I knew ET would be up there riding the comet, waiting for me, ready for us to be friends. I hadn’t made any friends since we’d moved here. But all of that was going to change. Tomorrow.

Tasked with Friday night dinner, Gramps, true to his usual style, had produced mince on toast. Normally I’d complain but I was bristling with excitement. Too wired to care. I ate it down in big hungry gulps, chattering away about my day at school and the frogs we’d been dissecting in science class.

‘I’m surprised they’re not teaching you about the comet,’ Gramps commented, lightly, eyes on his paltry meal. My eyes swung to Ryan - had he outed me to a grownup? Why else would Gramps be bringing up Halley’s Comet? If there was one thing Ryan was incapable of, it was lying. His face told me everything I needed to know - this topic being raised was a surprise to him too.

‘Space is boring, Gramps,’ I said, in my haughtiest voice. I had to pretend not to know, not to care anymore. I will never forget the look of hurt on his face. I will regret that until my dying day, whether it's beneath the light of a comet or not.

‘Oh, is it so?’ He said, sad smile on his lips. ‘That’s a shame.’ He seemed poised to say something else, but instead shook his head. Changing the subject he turned to Maia. ‘Jelly for dessert?’ Her excitable squeal answered his question, giving him back the joy I’d stolen.

Ryan and I snuck to bed early, on the premise of being well behaved young men. After we turned out our bedroom light we heard the familiar sound of Gramps putting the TV on. We waited ten minutes then slid from the window onto the deck; Ryan with the grace of a mountain goat, me hopping around trying not to make noise with my clunky cast. So far it had only been signed by mum and Ryan. Maia had smeared vegemite on it one morning during a breakfast stand off. Gramps had drawn a comet on there with a blue felt tip.

Shifting onto the pram base, I gripped the edges as Ryan pushed me up Conical Hill, heading to the peak, so we’d have a dark, uninterrupted view of the sky. Bundled in my lap was the alternator from the engine I found in the garage, something my imagination was convinced would be able to communicate with ET.

‘Of course your bloody plan involves you sitting pretty whilst I do the grunt work,’ my big brother grumbled, but at twelve and tall for his age Ryan was strong, lithe and didn’t even catch his breath as I counted the eleven switchbacks to the top.

‘There’s a rock on the edge, looking back to Jack’s Pass,’ I instructed. Pointing was useless, but I lifted my finger in the direction I intended him to go anyway. I held it, aloft, quivering, at the very same moment Ryan stopped pushing the pram. Someone was already there. Or something. My heart began to pound. I hoped, prayed, it was ET. The figure was stooped but I could see the angle of its gaze was fixed to the sky. I could read loneliness in the hunched presence of my assumed alien friend. My hand floated to the alternator.

‘Stranger danger?’ Ryan whispered, and the note of panic in his voice didn’t escape me. My heart went double time. If it wasn’t ET, who would be up here, creeping around in the dead of night? I was too young to realise how early nine pm was. They didn’t look threatening, but Ryan stood stock still, frozen with fear. I squinted, disappointment pooling in my belly at the thought we might have to softly retreat. As my eyes adjusted to the inky night, I realised the profile of the rock creature was all too familiar. It wasn’t the alien face I’d seen on forty five separate viewings – having squeezed in two more watches of ET in anticipation of meeting him when the comet blazed past, dropping him off the way a bus deposits old people at the various stops. Instead it was a face I’d seen so many more times than that.

‘Gramps?’ My voice rang out, clear as the night.

‘Well, well,’ he said, turning to face us, and there was no chiding in his voice. I did a quick calculation. He was meant to be watching us so although we would technically be in trouble for being out adventuring, I suspected he would be in more trouble. If adults even got in trouble. I wasn’t clear on that yet. ‘Thank goodness you had the good sense to bring your sister, or we’d all be in your mother’s bad books.’ He nodded at the pram, which I had stood from to speak. My eyelids flew up and Ryan’s voice quickly exhaled out one word.

‘Maia!’

He turned to start running back down the hill without saying anything further. Big brother responsibilities kicking in as he realised he was fastest and most likely to reach our baby sister first and check she was ok. Using the pram as a frame to help hop me along the ground, I came level with Gramps.

‘So, not into space stuff anymore, hey?’ His voice gentle and teasing, innately understanding why I was there. All of a sudden I wanted to be wrapped up in his warmth. I climbed and wound myself into his lap, popping my head under the crook of his chin as we both gazed upwards. It was exhausting growing up. On the cusp of leaving the innocence of childhood, I suddenly craved its comfort.

‘I’m sorry Gramps, I really wanted to see the comet and see whether it…’ Even at ten I knew the make-believe I’d so convinced myself of was exactly that. But this was Gramps. It was with trepidatious chagrin that I told him. ‘I thought the comet might be ET’s space ship. That I might see him. Be his friend. I thought he might be lonely if he arrived and no-one was here waiting for him.’

His delighted chuckle was as loving as the embrace he pulled me into. Any other adult in my life - mum, dad, my teacher - would have told me to grow up and stop being silly. But Gramps simply loved me for how I saw the world.

‘Why are you here?’ I asked. I craved his stories of space that narrated every bedtime tale he’d told, of the stars and their whimsical ways. But the story he told me was one I'd never heard before.

‘Well, my boy, I was born beneath the light of this comet. I wanted to see it to say thank you, for guiding me into this world. I’ve lived a whole life between the time this beautiful space rock has taken a single journey on its lonely pathway. And what a remarkable life it’s been. Two world wars, three children, buried my parents, buried my brothers…’ - a little choke erupted - ‘... buried my wife. And the whole time, Halley has simply taken one circuit of a cycle that started thousands of years before any of us were here, and will continue for thousands more after we’ve gone. I have so much to be joyful for, my beautiful girls, my wonderful grandchildren. There was just this one thing I had left to do in my life - I’ve been waiting for seventy six years - and that was to see the comet that was last here when I took my first breath on this earth. I wanted to come face to face with it, finally.’

I don’t know how long we sat there in silence. My small gloved hand clasped his big, gnarled palm, our eyes glazed over, and we contemplated with awe and wonder Halley’s latest passage.

‘I’m sorry your friend didn’t show,’ Gramps said softly.

‘That’s ok,’ I said, and I realised a very small part of me had truly believed ET was going to land on Conical Hill that night. A sob escaped without me even realising it was coming. I hadn’t thought it possible to be more tightly wrapped in my grandfather until he hugged me even deeper.

‘It’s hard. Moving somewhere fresh. Making new friends. I felt the same when Grandma died,’ he said, huskily.

Lonely, I thought. Was that what I was? It felt heavy and suffocating. I hadn’t stopped to realise it was something I could feel as a child. Loneliness was something that happened to old people. Was this how Gramps felt all the time? That feeling just before you go to sleep, when your eyes are heavy, your limbs tired and you just want to let go.

‘Time to head back, I think,’ Gramps said. My chattering teeth vibrating into his body. ‘Hop back on to that contraption of yours, Leo. I’ll push you down the hill.’

Ryan and I had run up Conical every day since we’d moved here, until I broke my leg. Sometimes we ran the long, boring switchback way, zigzagging up then back down the hill. Mostly we cut through the belly of the beast in straight lines through the trees. Which meant I knew where the little dips and dives were. Should have known, even in the dark, that we were navigating towards one. As the pram toppled, the almighty crash brought three separate cries into the hollow echo of the night. Cries of pain from Gramps and me, and a cry of surprise from Ryan. With a dozing Maia hitched on his hip in her snowsuit, he'd been walking back to meet us when the accident happened. He thought it was luck. I knew the comet had guided him back to us.

‘Ryan, run home, phone mum,’ I snapped urgently, arms reaching out to take the bundle of my sister into my lap.

His wild eyes took in the sight in front of him as he passed Maia across and he barked back at me, confused, ‘right, phone home,’ before spinning on his heel to sprint into the dark for the second time that night.

I held Gramps’s hand, removing my glove so I could feel the touch of his skin.

‘I’m so happy I got to watch this with you,’ he said, but his voice didn't sound like him anymore, it was ragged and thin. ‘You’re so lucky. Just think, if you live ten years longer than me, you’ll have the privilege of seeing this wonder twice in your lifetime. Not many people can say that.’

‘Maybe you’ll see it again Gramps,’ I started to say, and then it hit me. He wouldn’t. Mum wouldn’t. She should have been here with me. Dad wouldn’t see it again, if he saw it at all. We should all have come as a family. This was a once, maybe twice in a lifetime moment. I realised in all our years of stargazing there was one place Gramps had never pointed out to me in the night sky we now lay contemplating beyond the tops of the pine trees. My small voice wavered as I asked the question.

‘Gramps, whereabouts up there is heaven? Which star is it next to?’

He lifted his hand and placed it across my heart. ‘It’s down here,’ he tapped my chest, once, twice. ‘Right here. On earth. I’ll always be here, just as Cassi has been in my heart all these years.’

I turned my gaze skywards, realising the lie everyone but Gramps had been feeding me. All this time I’d looked to space for hope, for friendship, for life. Now I studied its vast emptiness. It was black, blank; alive only with the ghosts of a billion stars.

‘It looks lonely up there,’ I whispered, thinking of ET, and squeezed Gramps’s hand. He didn’t squeeze back, but under the moonlit glow I could see a smile on his face, his eyes closed to the heavens.