Stepma's Flight by Dan MacIsaac

My twin sister Kate and I figured that Stepma would be long gone by our birthday on November 28. Our stepmother couldn’t put up with Dad much longer. He wasn’t even coming home to the townhouse most Sunday nights after his sales work flogging chainsaws at trade fairs and loggers sports festivals. And when he did turn up, he stayed gorilla-glued to his stumpy, broke-backed couch, swigging the hard stuff, grimly silent.

“Like a gargoyle on Dracula’s castle,” Stepma dissed.

Kate and I knew that for our upcoming eleventh birthday we wouldn’t be forcing down forkfuls of Stepma’s sad sack sponge cake. On November 28 of 1983, I wouldn’t be blinking and blowing at drippy candles on saggy cake. Instead, I’d be gaping at the TV, amazed by the fiery launch of the first Spacelab mission. I planned to skip school that Monday for the blast-off. There’d be no stepmother around to bust up my witnessing the launch sequence. Beauty gunk packed, she’d have bolted to the big city by then. Stepma would be huddled down south before Dad’s icy silence thickened into a glacier.

But come late fall, Stepma was still holding out in our townhouse, making noises about birthdays. So, I told her that all I wanted for my birthday was to watch the Shuttle launch—which, I pointed out, would be totally free and really educational.

Wiley Kate, knowing that our stepparent was a sucker for family stuff, added in a gooey voice, “It’d be so nice for Cal and you and me—all three of us—to watch the rocket show together.”

With flashy fingernails, Stepma patted the heart side of her droopy sweater and sighed. “Together. All right. Though people say the whole thing’s staged. Faked in a film studio.”

On the Monday, my twin and I took turns puffing at eleven, tottery candles on Stepma’s ill-frosted, squishy dessert. Slices barely poked, Kate and I gawked at the flickering launch images on our little black and white Zenith while Stepma nattered on and on all through ignition and liftoff.

Soon after the space mission, Kate and I got bullish about Stepma being history by Xmas. She’d just beat it out of town before the holly days. Stepma wouldn’t want all that tinsel stress. Yule baking of burnt margarine shortbread. Skulking through the Sally Ann for cheap gizmos and still too few gifts to go ‘round. But she taped some mistletoe just outside the loo, the one room Dad was sure to visit. We didn’t see the sprig get much action, though Stepma had lacquered on glaring green and red gloss on all ten of her fake fingernails, trying to make the sad season bright.

Turned out, Stepma refused to be old news. At year end, she was still hanging on by her falsie fingernails. Dad hadn’t given her the boot. Though he laid down a heavy hint, chucking all her cosmetic bags out the bathroom window onto our frost-burned patch of grass and grunting that she’d left no room by the sink for his razor.

On New Year's Eve, Stepma plonked down with us, a fresh drink in her tumbler (nobody was keeping a booze tally), in front of the idiot box for the Times Square Ball Drop. She was letting us join the Countdown, though it was way past our sleepy time. Dad’s bedtime was god knows where, and we guessed that Dad hadn’t been around the townhouse long enough to give Stepma the old heave-ho.

To quote Stepma’s common complaint, “Your dad’s always off someplace else, chasing a dollar or a dame or a dream.”

“Got res-solutions?” she slurred after all the confetti storms, car horn blares and fireworks bursts simmered down.

“Nope,” Kate and I chimed.

“Got some for youse to make. But I’ll let youse hear mine first.”

Kate chirped, “’Kay.”

I echoed, “’Kay,” willing to endure hearing Stepma’s resolutions for herself, in the hope of putting off, for a bit, an earful about the year of chores she had in mind for me.

Stepma said, “Beating cancer. I got cancer. Breast cancer. When I told youse I was off to the hairdresser those times, I was really going for some needling then getting a s-small lump cut out. Now I’m facing chemo. I think your dad’s really worried. S-scared s-shitless. But I’m gonna beat it.”

One of the Science Solutions programs I’d watched was on cancer treatment. It spouted off about biopsies and lumpectomies and chemotherapies like they were just routines. Like dental cleaning. But I knew all cancer stuff was ugly and awful. Nothing like teeth scaling or fluoride drops.

Kate said in a small voice, “I guess this means Cal and I gotta be nicer to you.”

Stepma sputtered, “I got res-solutions for both of youse. Just hang up your s-soggy towels. No toothpaste s-spits on the mirror. And don’t leave dirty runners lying in the hall where s-somebody like your dad could trip and bust a leg.”

In the months that followed, we did try to tidy up but . . .

“I’m trying to hold down the fort,” Stepma would yelp, casting a crooked eye at some mess Kate and I made in the hallway or our bedrooms. “But this place is a wreck like The Alamo.”

Sure, Stepma would lose her cool and yell, but she wasn’t a whacker. Though she did chuck a sauce pot at Dad when he, showing up for once, complimented her on how chemo was trimming her figure.

Stepma had lost inches off her hips as well as a lot of hair. She bought smaller slacks and a couple of cheap wigs.

About the hairpieces, Stepma said, “Two for one. Probably made of monkey fur.”

I whooped like an ape. “Lend one to Dad. He’s bald.”

“As a fish,” said Kate.”

“Like a whale,” I said.

“Like a snake,” said Stepma.

Kate said, “You’re saving loads not going to the hairdresser.”

Stepma laughed. “I’m losing lots of hair. But I’m not losing you two.”

I squirmed out of her lunging hug. Kate didn’t fight at all and gave in to Stepma’s grip.

Were we warming up to Stepma, the woman who’d subbed in for our birth mother?

Well, about Bio-mom, I’d say, “Good riddance.” One time, maybe a month before Stepma first showed up at the townhouse, Dad was lying as usual on his raggedy, cutdown couch and knocking back the rocket fuel. For once, he got all vodka-talky. He told us how his ex, our mother, wanted to name us twins after the Dakotas where, before she met Dad, she’d barhopped all the way from Mount Rushmore through the badlands to Devil's Lake. Kate woulda been tagged South Dakota ‘cause she, lying low in Bio-mom’s belly, got born first. That woulda left me, the laggard boy, being labelled North Dakota—the state with all those hoodoos and abandoned boom towns.

Dad had said, “Hell no!” to those names getting inked on our birth certificates and wouldn’t compromise, even when Bio-mom said they could saw it off and call the pair of us after the two states of Carolina, where she’d also gone on a tear. Anyway, Bio-mom skedaddled before the filled-out forms hit the Vital Stats office. Our certificates showed up plain, reading Kate and Cal, not even Katherine and Calvin. Bio-mom did slink back to the townhouse like a scraggly tabby cat scratching at the door. But she never stuck with us, finally clearing off for good when Kate and I were six.

Stepma was still sticking around the townhouse in early October ’84, nearly two months before our twelfth birthday. Right after school on the first Monday in October, I burst into the kitchen where Stepma was greasing a cupcake tin. I blurted that this coming Friday I had to skip school. Because October 5 was the date of a shuttle launch I just couldn’t miss. This time NASA would be deploying a research satellite that measured the heat the Earth got from the sun and then gave back to outer space. And the orbiter would have a lucky number of crew on board: seven. Stepma didn’t hem and haw. She nodded her okay and finished oiling. Then Stepma hauled down a can from an upper shelf. Its label, partly peeled off, showed a fat pineapple shedding yellow chunks of fruit like shrapnel. With the heel of her palm, she jammed a rusty opener onto the lid.

Kate skipped in and stopped by the kitchen counter.

Stepma glanced from Kate to me and back. “I’ve got my own good news to share, now that everybody’s here.”

Warily, Kate eyed the slick pan and punctured can. Probably she was remembering the sawdusty/iron filings taste of Stepma’s last batch of pineapple tidbit cupcakes.

Stepma gulped and snuffled. “I—I feel reborn. Under a lucky star. This morning the doc told me I was in the clear. Not a speck of cancer left. He called it in remission.”

Kate grabbed Stepma as if they were hockey goons. Their hug was so hard that they bumped against the counter and one of Stepma’s nails got splintered. I reached over and patted our stepmother on the poofy shoulder of her sweater. After Stepma’s news, I wheedled her into giving thumbs up to Kate skipping class too. My sister would flop in front of our set for the best broadcast of the year. And who could say no to a stepparent, all healed, keen to join us for the great space show?

Come Friday, Kate and Stepma crushed together on Dad’s busted loveseat. I balanced my butt on the shredded ottoman. On the shrunken TV screen, the orbiter Challenger, strapped to its booster rockets and tank, looked like a fly glued to firecrackers. I squirmed during the closeup shots of the astronauts as Stepma kept yakking like some maniac sports announcer and all the while rat-a-tat-tatting her pink press-on nails across the cracked glass top of the coffee table.

“That guy is some good-looking spaceman,” said Stepma, raising a broad hand from the tabletop to jab at the screen with plastic fingernail. “A hunk. Even in a goldfish bowl helmet.”

Kate and I rolled our baby blues.

I pointed out, “That’s Marc Garneau. Payload specialist. From Canada.”

Stepma sucked in air. “He’s sure no Dudley Do-Right.”

After the countdown and the ascent, I told Stepma and Kate, “That launch was really cool. But what’ll be really really cool will be the re-entry. Nose pitched up for drag, the shuttle will slam into the atmosphere. She’ll burn through air, flames licking her carbon wings and the silicon heat shields on her belly. Then parachutes will billow and she’ll glide onto the runway like a queen.”

Stepma announced, “And this was the first flight of two women in space, Sally Ride and Kathryn Sullivan.”

Those facts spouted by Stepma floored me. Her knowing some astro stats. I was supposed to be the space buff.

I must have looked kinda stunned because Stepma, flashing her peg teeth, added, “Hey, I looked stuff up. These are real live lady astronauts who won’t be messed with. I can’t see the space bosses faking this launch. Two tough women up there chasing after stars.”

Stepma gave my sister’s hoodied shoulder a friendly little shake. “She’s a Kate like you.”

Then Stepma poked a glossy thumbnail toward her chest. “And I could be a Sally Ride.”

“Yeah,” I sniped, “Like you could handle Sally Ride’s mission. Working a robot arm. In zero gravity.”

Stepma answered, “I could train. Practice on your dad. He’s kinda a robot.”

No beating heart, I thought. Just wiring.

I smirked. “You couldn’t keep him at your Mission Control. He’d go AWOL.”

“Unplug him,” Kate piped up. “He’d have no juice. No power to run on or run off.”

Slinging an arm around Kate, Stepma wisecracked, “Yeah. Unplug him like a pop-up toaster jammed with burnt crumbs. And smoking.”

Stepma tightened the hug into a clinch. Giggling, Kate squirmed in the cramped loveseat. Our stepmother lifted her arm but snagged her nails on my sister’s frayed hoodie that Stepma had snapped up at the Sally Ann.

With her free hand, Stepma picked quickly at the loose threads tangled up with her falsie nails, saying, “Stay put. Don’t want to rip that hoodie worse. It was the best deal ever dug out of the bargain bin.”