Stars

            (An observatory.  CAROLINE and JEAN are seated.)

CAROLINE:  They never listened to me.

JEAN:  It’s important not to be bitter, Caroline.

CAROLINE:  I’m not bitter.  I’m not even mad.  It’s just too late now to…Oh my.

JEAN:  Well, even if they HAD listened, what could they do?  Shoot it out of the sky?

CAROLINE:  We could have prepared at least.  Or we could have helped everybody else prepare.  People have had—what?  A few days to adjust to the idea that their lives are over?  How can you significantly squeeze a lifetime worth of—whatever it is you want to do—into a few days?

JEAN:  Maybe it’s better this way.  Imagine if everybody on the entire planet had known for thirty years that the world was going to end this weekend?  Imagine the selfishness, war, the actions most people would—it’s better.

CAROLINE:  Is that why you sand-bagged me?

JEAN:  Caroline—

CAROLINE:  Threw doubt onto my research when you knew it was accurate?

JEAN:  Are we going to dig this up again?

CAROLINE:  No.  No point.

JEAN:  I questioned your research because that was my job.  We were the only two women working—well, practically in the entire field for all I knew—I mean, there were a few in California, but for the east coast, we were it.  And it wouldn’t have helped anything to have everybody thinking the crazy women were predicting the end of the world.

CAROLINE:  If a man had said it—

JEAN:  It was unpleasant and nobody wants to hear unpleasant things.  That’s what the issue was.

CAROLINE:  It ruined my career.

JEAN:  I warned you about going public.

CAROLINE:  Something had to be done.

JEAN:  If you wanted to work in a field that could effect change, you should have become a lobbyist or something.  We’re astronomers.  We don’t intend to fix anything, we just observe.  We’re observers.

CAROLINE:  There are still things to be learned from what we observe.

JEAN:  Of course, but you were talking about spending thirty years building bunkers and—

CAROLINE:  And do you think people didn’t?  You think those bunkers don’t exist?  People listened to me.  They may have scoffed and laughed, but in the back of their minds, they listened—and they prepared.  Just not enough people.  That’s why you need buckets of money just to get into any of those bunkers.

JEAN:  My daughter’s going in one.

CAROLINE:  Well, she’s the governor.  She should.

JEAN:  She’s going to have to leave her daughter behind.

CAROLINE:  No!  They won’t let her—

JEAN:  She’s not essential.  That’s how careful they are.

CAROLINE:  If it were my daughter, I wouldn’t go.

JEAN:  I don’t think she is.  I think she’s going to try and make a switch.  Her daughter for herself.  What good is it being governor anyway?  It doesn’t mean anything.  In situations like these, it’s just a title.

CAROLINE:  Everybody should just settle in.  There’s nothing that can be done, so why go in bunkers and panic and—

JEAN:  People fight.  It’s what we do as humans—we’re fighters.  We don’t settle in.

CAROLINE:  It makes me think of something I saw on the news once.  These people lived in tornado alley and when a tornado destroyed their house they just kept screaming ‘We’re so mad!  Something should be done!’  As if anything could be done about tornadoes.

JEAN:  Well, they could have moved out of tornado alley.  That might have been a step in the right direction.

CAROLINE:  We spent our entire lives looking at stars.  Does that seem like a—

JEAN:  Caroline, don’t suggest that I’ve done something meaningless with my life.  I did with it precisely what I wanted to, and that’s more that most people can say.

CAROLINE:  I was twelve when I got my first telescope.  It was more than my father could afford but my mother saved up for a year, and then at Christmas, there it was.  I couldn’t even speak, I was so happy.  I just remember hugging her and hugging her and she was laughing because of how emotional it made me.  ‘This is for you, sweetheart,’ she said, ‘I’d give you the stars if I could, but I can’t—so here’s the next best thing.’  After that, I always associated what I did with that feeling—of Christmas morning, and my mother’s sacrifice, and that hug that never ended.

JEAN:  I just remember a handsome science teacher at my high school named Mr. Walker who told me I was too pretty to be as smart as I was.  Nowadays I’d be offended to know a teacher said something like that to a girl, but back then—Oh God, he was so handsome.  I hung on his every word and my marks in science were so good, my father said, ‘You should keep on with that’ so I did.

CAROLINE:  I still have a telescope in my bedroom.  Not the original one of course, but—I’ve never been able to sleep unless I had a telescope somewhere nearby.

JEAN:  You still look at the stars every night?

CAROLINE:  No, I use it to spy on my neighbor across the street.

JEAN:  Caroline!

CAROLINE:  He’s one of those Crossfit instructors.  And very tall.

JEAN:  You always were secretly shameless.

CAROLINE:  I’m not sure there’s a way to be secretly shameless, Jean.  You sort of have to shout about it.  That’s the point.

JEAN:  I’m glad we’re friends again.  I missed you all those years.

CAROLINE:  The truth is I wanted to stay mad at you, but I was afraid my anger would outlast one or the both of us, so I just said screw it and that was the day I called you.  Who knew if you let forgiveness come first, it’ll take care of the anger?

JEAN:  I wonder where all the men are now.  The ones we worked with over the years.  The one who told you that you were wrong?

CAROLINE:  They’re dead.  That’s the nice thing about being a woman.  You have to suffer the oppression of men, but ultimately you outlive all of them and then you get to write books about them, and that becomes your revenge.

            (They laugh.)

JEAN:  And here we are.

CAROLINE:  Back looking at stars.

JEAN:  A whole lifetime of it and there’s still so much I don’t know.

CAROLINE:  What a beautiful thing.  To spend an entire life chasing after something you know you’ll never catch.

            (They look up, close their eyes, and smile.)