Chasing Stardust: A Novel By Erica Lucke Dean - 2

Ziggy Stardust

Our kitchen looks like Paula Deen exploded. From the doorway, I count at least three homemade pies resting on the glass cooktop. Assorted casserole dishes litter every available flat surface, and the light reflecting off the aluminum foil is blinding. Stacked around the Pyrex graveyard are plastic containers in nearly every color of the rainbow, as if our house is where Tupperware came to die. The church ladies thought of everything—right down to the tub of whipped I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! nestled in a basket of freshly baked brown ’n serve rolls.

“Hungry?” Jeanie holds out an oval dish filled with what looks like regurgitated dog food.

The stench of boiled cabbage and scalloped potatoes slaps me in the face like a wet sneaker, making my stomach roll over and play dead. “I’d rather starve.”

“Suit yourself.” Jeanie shoves the dish into the overcrowded refrigerator before taking a seat next to Grandma. She taps a shimmery pink fingernail on the table in a quick staccato, mimicking my erratic heartbeat, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

I alternate my gaze between Jeanie and Grandma Lola. “Is this an intervention?”

Instead of answering, Grandma gives me a syrupy smile that all but confirms my suspicions.

I pivot on my heel, ready to march back the way I came. “If you need me, I’ll be in my room yanking out my fingernails, one at a time.”

“Sit!” Jeanie points at the open seat across from her.

“Fine.” I scrape my chair across the floor before falling into it with a grunt.

The two of them share covert glances, speaking in code with their eyes.

“Sooo . . .” I drag out the word, filling the uncomfortable silence. “What’s the mysterious reason Mom wants us to spread her ashes between Cleveland and Santa Monica?”

Grandma finally releases her stranglehold on the urn and sets it in the center of the table. “It’s a long story.”

“It’s not like I have anything better to do.” I cross my arms and straighten my spine. If I miss the rapidly closing window to register for classes, I’ll have nothing but time.

“As you both know, I haven’t exactly lived a conventional life,” Grandma starts.

I snort. “Understatement.”

Jeanie pins me with a glare. “Let her talk.”

“As I was saying . . .” Grandma folds her hands on the table. “I’ve always been somewhat of a nomad, floating from one place to another like a leaf in the wind.”

I open my mouth to mention the press pass, but she holds up a finger, preempting my question.

“I may have parlayed my love of music into an actual job, but long before I snagged my first paycheck, my cousin Penny convinced me to sneak off to Cleveland to see Led Zeppelin with her.” She gazes straight through us, as if she’s found a window into the past. “Penny was a little older than me, but far more worldly than her years. She was ‘nineteen going on thirty,’ as Momma used to say. She smoked pot, drank cheap whiskey, and ran around with the best-looking boys in town. So, naturally, I wanted to be just like her.”

Almost against my will, her story draws me in. “How old were you?”

A gravelly chuckle rolls up her throat. “Barely seventeen—and if my mother had known how long it would be before she saw me again, she would’ve nailed my windows shut.”

“You ran away?” Jeanie’s jaw drops. “Just like that?”

Grinning ear to ear, Grandma nods. “With nothing but a change of clothes, the last seven dollars from my piggy bank, and my brand-new driver’s license.”

Even in the 1970s, I doubt she would’ve gotten far on seven dollars. “How did you pay for the tickets?”

“Oh, we didn’t have tickets.” She snickers. “Penny knew the guy at the gate. When we got to Cleveland, she not only got us into the concert without a single ticket between us, but she sweet-talked the security guards into letting us backstage to meet the band. I spent the weekend sleeping in the back seat of Penny’s powder-blue Pinto, and I never went back. That beat-up old hatchback was practically my home for the next two years while we hit every concert in Ohio. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“So you were a rebel. What does that have to do with Mom?” I sneak a peek at my phone. Nothing.

“I’m getting to that.” Grandma takes a deep breath. “In September 1972, a young Englishman with flaming hair and four-inch platform boots walked onto the stage at the Cleveland Music Hall and changed everything I knew about the world. I’m not exaggerating when I say he blew my mind. None of us had ever seen anything like it before—the hair, the makeup, the elaborate costumes. He was this glittering alien, oozing sex appeal.”

I shudder.

Grandma waggles her eyebrows and lets out a barking laugh. “Oh, Zoey, honey, you have no idea.”

“This is so wrong.” Groaning, I cover my face with both hands. “You’re my grandmother . I don’t want to think about you cavorting with oozing rock stars.”

“I wasn’t always your grandmother. And trust me, Bowie oozed. The man was out of this world. I was . . . more than a little obsessed to be honest. I practically got down on my knees and begged Penny to follow Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars to Memphis for the next stop. She was up for almost anything in those days, so we hopped in the Pinto and followed the tour bus the whole way there. The first several stops on the tour were hardly sellouts, but it gave us a chance to get to know the band. To talk with them. Party with them. I may have only been nineteen, but I was mature beyond my years.”

“That’s a fascinating story,” I deadpan, stealthily checking my messages again.

Finally, a text from Damian: Hey babe, whatcha doing?

As if he doesn’t know.

But since I can only fight one battle at a time, I simply text him a quick call ya later before pocketing my phone and going back to the conversation at hand. “I still don’t see what any of that has to do with Mom.”

“Your mother was conceived somewhere between Memphis and Malibu.” Grandma’s smile turns wistful, as if reliving the moment.

Jeanie leans in, hanging on every juicy word.

“So you . . . hooked up with one of the roadies or something?” No wonder Mom never wanted to talk about her dad.

“No.” Grandma laughs. “Not one of the roadies.”

“Another groupie?”

Jeanie cackles as if she already knows the answer.

“No, Zoey. I didn’t sleep with some random groupie.”

Frustration finally gets to me. “Then who?”

Grandma’s green eyes sparkle with untold secrets. “Ziggy Stardust himself.”

“Wait . . . you’re going where?” Damian’s voice roars down the line, and I pull the phone away from my ear. All things considered, he’s taking the news about as well as expected.

Swallowing a groan, I shove my old Pooh Bear to the side and fall into a stack of pillows. “Cleveland, for starters.”

He snorts. “Why the hell would you go to the Mistake on the Lake on purpose?”

Ignoring his tired joke, I switch the call to speaker and gaze down at the old photo of him grinning up at me from the phone display. His olive complexion is even darker in person, especially now that it’s warm enough to be outside all day. I reach for the discarded bear and hug it to my chest. “I’m going with Jeanie and my grandma to spread my mom’s ashes. It’s a long story.”

“Oh. Right.” He clears the attitude from his throat and lowers his voice. “How long will you be gone?”

“Not sure yet.” I pick at a loose thread on Pooh’s butt. Mom probably sewed the same seam over a hundred times since I was a toddler. “A week . . . maybe longer?”

“For Chrissakes, Zoey! You’re supposed to be registering for classes and coming to look at apartments with me this weekend.” And just like that, the attitude’s back.

“I didn’t plan this, you know?” Everything—Mom’s death, Grandma’s bombshell, the road trip—weighs down on me until I damn near boil over like a pot of potatoes.

Damian lets out a defeated sigh. “I’m sorry about your mom, Zo. I, uh, would’ve been at the funeral but . . . you know I’m not good with emotional shit.”

“Yeah, I know.”

His aversion to “emotional shit” is one of the many reasons for rethinking my decision to join him at Penn State. The plan was always to go to college together. I enrolled—went to orientation and everything—but then right after graduation, Mom took a turn for the worse, and I couldn’t leave. Now that she’s gone, I’m not sure I want the same things I did two years ago.

My eyes and nose prickle as I fight back tears.

“Don’t cry, baby,” he pleads.

“I’m not a baby . . . and I’m not crying!” My voice cracks, taking a bite out of my anger.

Damian releases a ragged breath. “Don’t worry about school right now, okay? Do your thing and come back.”

“Thanks,” I say, the word bitter on my tongue.

How dare he act as if I need his permission to spread my mother’s ashes. He doesn’t need to know I hate the idea. Or how many times I tried convincing my sister to spread Mom’s ashes damn near anywhere else. How I’m only going because she gave me no choice.

“Will I see you before you leave?” he asks.

“Maybe.”

Shouldn’t he be more concerned about your emotional state than whether or not he gets laid before you go? The voice in my head sounds a whole lot like Jeanie’s, and I quickly block it out before it says something I can’t ignore.

“I don’t know. I’ll ask Jeanie and call you in the morning.” Or maybe I won’t, and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it.

“Whatever. Have a nice trip.” Damian hangs up, still fuming over a decision even I don’t understand, and I’m more than over his childish dramatics.

The streetlights outside my window flicker on. One after the other, they come to life, glowing orbs stretching out in both directions as far as the eye can see, like fireflies lining up for dinner. I shove the window sash as high as it goes and climb onto the porch overhang—the secret spot I go when I need to be alone with my thoughts.

With my back to the weathered blue siding, I sit on the scratchy gray shingles and pull my knees to my chest, trying and failing to picture my grandmother—even a much younger version of the woman I know—kissing an actual rock god. I tug a loose thread on my sleep shorts, unraveling the hem halfway around my leg before realizing what I’ve done.

Shit. I break off the string, letting it float through the breeze.

Do ashes float when you spread them?

A tear rolls down my cheek, and I wipe it before it hits my chin. This is not how my life was supposed to go. I should be halfway through college by now. Maybe changing majors because I can’t decide between math and science. Spending spring and summer breaks barhopping at the beach with friends. Making plans for the future. Not burying my mom. Definitely not spreading her ashes in far-off places.

“What the hell were you thinking, Mom?” I close my eyes, and she’s waiting for me behind my lids.

“ Promise me, Zoey.” Her reedy voice rings through my memory. “Promise me you’ll spread my ashes in each city he played. ”

Her pale, cracked lips barely moved as she whispered—the sound little more than vapor to my ears. Her request made no sense. It didn’t the first time, and it doesn’t now. But her unwavering determination chipped at my defenses . . . wearing me down.

“I don’t understand, Mom.”

“You will.” She smiled and closed her eyes as if she knew she’d won.

At the end, I didn’t argue with her. The absolute last thing I wanted was to say anything that was less than perfect when I didn’t know how long we had. She was so pale. So thin. With her eyes closed, it was hard to tell if she was still in there anymore. Watching her wither away little by little, connected to machines via tubes and wires, broke my heart. My only comfort came from the rhythmic beep of the machine counting her remaining heartbeats like a ticking time bomb.

“Mind some company?” My sister pokes her head out the window, scattering my memory to the wind. With her ice-blond hair pulled into a loose ponytail, and her face scrubbed clean, she could easily pass for a teenager.

“How’d you find me?”

“You always come out here to brood.” Jeanie throws a bare foot over the sill and ducks under the sash to climb out.

So much for my secret spot.

Without another word, I slide over to give her room. Instead of sitting beside me, she brushes a few leaves aside and sits across from me with her back to the street and her eyes on the stars.

“Hell of a day, huh?”

Leave it to Jeanie to understate the obvious.

In her pink yoga pants and matching hoodie, she looks exactly like she did when we were kids. Even now, she’s all pretty in pink, and I’m moody blue with the whole world on my shoulders. For some reason, I find it hard to stay mad at her when she strips away the mask and turns into the little girl who taught me how to crack open an Oreo to eat the cream filling first.

“I talked to G-Lo. If we leave first thing tomorrow, we can hit Cleveland before lunch, get shit done, and make it halfway to Memphis before dark,” she says without taking a breath.

Tomorrow? My empty stomach clenches into a tight fist. Tell her you don’t want to go. “Okay.”

Chickenshit.

“We’ll be gone two weeks. Three at the most. I absolutely have to be back by the last week of July. I start my job August first.”

“I don’t have any plans.” Damian would disagree, but he’ll get over it. There’s always spring semester. “But I still don’t understand why we’re doing this. I call bullshit on G-Lo’s story. I get people were all about the free love back then, and maybe she banged every roadie along that tour—”

“She named Mom Davida.”

“Which is totally weird but doesn’t prove anything. There’s no way in hell she got close enough to Bowie to smell his sweat, let alone swap bodily fluids.” Visions of the Goblin King humping my grandma pop into my head, and I quickly banish them before they take up residence. “Sorry. Not buying it.”

Jeanie wraps her arms around her legs and rests her chin on her knees. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Mom believed it.”

Mom may have wanted to believe it, but I don’t believe for one minute she actually did.

“Come on, Jeanie. David Bowie? You’re as unhinged as Grandma if you let her suck you into her delusions.”

“I read her diary, Zo.”

“Grandma Lola’s diary?” Graphic visions of drug-fueled orgies dance through my imagination, and I shut them down just as quickly. “I’ll bet that was . . . weird.”

Her laugh echoes in the night air. “No, dumbass. Mom’s.”

“Hold on . . .” My mouth goes dry, and my lungs still. “Mom had a diary? Why am I just now hearing about this?”

Jeanie lifts her head, but her arms tighten around her legs. “I guess she didn’t think you were ready to read it.”

“But you were?” My heart rattles behind my ribs, my stomach twisting painfully as I try to make sense of what I’m hearing.

“You were just a kid.”

“I’m only two years younger than you!”

Jeanie exhales a sharp breath. “She gave it to me for safekeeping. She’d just started chemo. You were studying for finals. She didn’t want to distract you.”

I blink, then blink again. “You’ve had it for two years and never told me?”

“I didn’t read it. Not until after . . .” Jeanie drops her gaze. “She made me promise to wait until she was gone. So I’d understand.”

Something inside me snaps. White-hot anger rises up, lashing out like a cracking whip. My whole life I’ve been stuck with Jeanie’s hand-me-downs—her clothes, her toys. Everything was hers before it was mine . . . even Mom. Even now.

“Why you?” My anger unfurls like a giant sail, catching the wind. “I’m the one who took care of her all this time. I’m the one who gave up everything and stayed behind!”

“Maybe she was afraid you couldn’t handle it then.”

“And now?” Feelings of inadequacy, of desperation, well up in me. Mom hadn’t trusted me. Hadn’t thought I could handle the truth. But Jeanie could. My hands shake as I roughly grip my thighs, holding myself still before I jump across the roof and tackle her. “Where is it now? Or am I still unworthy?”

Jeanie rolls her eyes as if my request is beneath her. As if she still sees me as that fragile little girl who cried over spilled ice cream. “It’s in my carry-on.”

“Go get it. Right now.”

She shifts her weight but doesn’t get up. “Not until you calm down.”

“Damn it, Jeanie!” I release my thighs and the blood rushes back in. “You’re such a bitch!”

Jeanie’s lips take on a cruel slant, and she chuckles under her breath. “ I may be a bitch, but you’re acting like a child.”

Her words sting more than they should, and I suck in a breath.

“Whoa! What’s going on out here?” Grandma Lola leans out the open window. “Keep this up and one of you is going to fall and break your neck.”

“She started it.” The instant the words tumble past my lips, I know I’ve lost. Congratulations, Zoey. You just proved Jeanie’s point.

I half expect Grandma to hug us into submission. Instead, she plops down beside Jeanie and crisscrosses her legs. She pulls a cigarette from behind her ear like a hippie magician and lights it with a rainbow-colored Bic from her pocket. “Now what’s all the ruckus about?”

With a sigh, the fight drains out of Jeanie. “Mom gave me her diary, and—”

“And I don’t think it’s fair for her to know all Mom’s secrets while I’m left in the dark,” I say.

“I was planning to let you read it,” Jeanie mutters.

“When? After I graduate college?”

Grandma leans forward and exhales a smoke ring. “Is it the diary from our trip?”

Jeanie cocks her head. “How’d you—”

“As far as I know, it’s the only time your mother kept a diary.”

A sad smile crosses Jeanie’s lips. “It starts on the day you told her about her dad . . .”

“And ends on the last day of our trip . . . on Santa Monica Pier.” Grandma takes another drag on her cigarette and nods as if she’s reliving the memory.

Alternating my gaze between them, I heave a heavy sigh. “Will one of you tell me what the hell you’re talking about? What trip? How old was I?”

“You weren’t even born yet, Zoey,” Grandma says. “The summer before your mom started college, I told her the same story I told you girls this afternoon. She wanted to see all the places I’d gone on that tour. Wanted a way to connect with her father . . . and me, I suppose.”

Eager to hear more, I crawl across the roof until I practically land in my grandmother’s lap. “So you took off on a road trip? Just like that?”

She nods. “We spent the entire summer retracing my steps from ’72. She never told you about the time we snuck her into a pub to sing karaoke?”

“No.” I laugh at the thought of my straitlaced mom sneaking into a bar.

Grandma’s face lights up. “You should have seen her. She wore one of my ripped band tees and a pair of frayed cutoffs. And the things we did in New York City would curl your toes! It was before camera phones, but I think your mom took photos at every stop.”

“She did.” Jeanie swipes a stray tear from her cheek. “She taped them to pages inside her diary.”

Grandma snuffs out her cigarette on a shingle and tosses the butt over the side. “We had the best time that summer.”

Dozens of questions pick at loose threads in my soul. Five minutes ago, I wanted nothing to do with Grandma Lola’s ridiculous story, and now I can’t get enough to quench my curiosity. “Just that summer? You didn’t go on any other wild trips together?”

“Sadly, no. She went off to school, met your father, started a career and a family. We were on different paths right from the beginning. The road’s no place for a baby. I should know.” She blinks several times before changing the subject. “What do you girls say? Should we leave in the morning?”

“Sounds good to me.” Jeanie turns to me, eyes probing.

“I don’t know.” It was easy to get caught up in her story, but I still don’t understand how a summer trip Mom took over thirty years ago factors into her final resting place. “Why can’t we just spread her ashes under the big tree in the yard? At least then we can go talk to her sometimes.”

Jeanie’s nostrils flare, her jaw clenching and unclenching. “Because Mom’s gone, Zo. She’s not coming back. But you know what? I’m here. And you’re here. And she wouldn’t want us spending every damn minute of every damn day mourning her. Sticking around this shitty little town, or tied to this shitty little house, just to visit her tree every day. She’d want us out there”—Jeanie points into the night—“experiencing life. So pack a damn bag, because we’re going!”

A twinge of guilt silences my objection, the words turning to ash in my mouth. I jerk my head in a curt nod.

Jeanie’s features relax, as if the weight of the world was lifted from her shoulders. “I think we should re-create the pictures Mom took in each city. Zo and I can even pose the same way she did. In the fountain in Cleveland . . .”

Grandma’s eyes light up. “On the pier in Santa Monica?”

“Exactly!” Jeanie beams.

“I love that idea.” Grandma pulls out a hand-rolled cigarette from her pocket.

My gaze locks on her fingers as she lights it and takes a long drag, holding her breath for what seems like forever.

The skunky odor hits my nostrils, and I flinch. “Is that pot?”

She finally exhales, coughing as she waves the cloud away from my face. “Don’t have an aneurysm, dear. It’s perfectly legal. I have a prescription.”

She seems to forget that Mom had cancer. I know all about the law. Sure, people did it, but not out in the open. Not on the roof where the neighbors can see.

“This isn’t California!” I hiss. “You can’t smoke it here!”

“What the hell else are you supposed to do with it?” Grandma takes another drag.

Panicking, I turn to my sister. “Tell her!”

Jeanie laughs. “She’s freaking out because the guy across the street is a mall security guard.”

“Ooh, a mall cop?” Grandma snickers. “That is scary.”

Rough asphalt scrapes my skin as I scramble to my knees. Just being here makes me an accessory. Guilt by association, like Mom always said. “You two are gonna get me arrested!”

“Honey, it’s only a crime if you get caught. And it’ll be legal in all fifty states before you know it, mark my words.” Grandma passes the joint to Jeanie, who takes it without hesitation.

I stare at Jeanie as a wave of panic threatens to drown me. “You said you were quitting!”

She smirks. “Today wasn’t the day to quit.”

“What if your new job drug tests you?”

Jeanie rolls her eyes. “They won’t.”

“You don’t know that!” I grab her wrist, but she won’t give up the joint without a fight.

The roof is like sandpaper under my bare feet as we dance around, hands locked in the most epic thumb war ever. Jeanie rotates her wrist to the right, and I counter with a twist to the left.

“Let me go, you lunatic.” She jerks her hand free and stumbles backward, a scream caught in her throat.

“Be careful!” Grandma Lola squeals. “Don’t drop the doobie!”

Jeanie teeters precariously near the edge for half a second before regaining her balance. “That was close.” She barely gets the words out before the shingles beneath her break free and she disappears over the side with a bloodcurdling shriek.

“Jeanie!” I scramble to the edge and peer over, unable to catch my breath. My chest goes quiet as I gape down at her still form sprawled across the top of a thick boxwood shrub. She can’t be dead. Not her, too.

In the shrub below, Jeanie groans, her arm twitching.

“Call 911!” I throw a leg over the side and shimmy down the vine-covered post before the rational side of my brain takes over. The second my feet touch the ground, I race to her side, high on adrenaline as I kneel on the damp grass and grab her wrist to check for a pulse. She moans at the contact, and I release a breath. “I thought I’d killed you!”

She cracks open one eye. “Not unless hell looks like Western Pennsylvania. But . . .” She opens the other eye and winces. “I’m pretty sure I broke something.”

Relief washes over me, allowing anger to sneak in. “I told you drugs were dangerous!”

Jeanie’s glare threatens to burn me to a crisp. “You seriously have your priorities messed up, Zo.”