Back with the usual JC angst. This could be total crap for all I know, but I guess I leave that to my readers to decide!
My father was a rocket man
He loved the world beyond the world, the sky beyond the sky
And on my mother's face,
as lonely as the world in space
I could read the silent cry
That if my father fell into a star
We must not look upon that star again
[...]
Tears are often jewel-like
My mother's went unnoticed by my father, for his jewels were the stars...
- Rocket Man, Pearls Before Swine
Despite being named after a constellation, Andromeda Neutron had never felt like a star. Her parents far outshone her.
Cindy Vortex was, by no means, easy to have as a mother. She was equal parts cold and boastful, incredibly sharp, and emotionally stunted by her own difficult upbringing. Andromeda had never had much contact with her mother's family; she was brought up to understand that Sasha Vortex had never taken kindly to her only child's decision to marry her former rival, and that Cindy's father had been more or less absent.
And if it was difficult growing up with Cindy as a mother, it was, perhaps even harder, in a different way, growing up under the shadow of the late James Isaac Neutron as a father. Moreso because Andromeda knew she would never live up to his level of brilliance.
Though she certainly stood to inherit the cognitive fruits of her parents' combined intellect, she feared that she was a disappointment to them more often than not.
Cindy sometimes gave her reason to believe this, always demanding more of her child and turning her nose up at Andromeda's accomplishments and attempts to impress. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Jimmy overcompensated for constantly working by heaping praise on her for even the smallest things.
When Andromeda gave the eulogy at her father's funeral, the first thing she mentioned was that when she was a little girl, Jimmy had often called her his little galaxy, often marveling at the mismatch between her small size and her internal complexity. She would amuse herself for hours on end reading and picking apart inventions while her father sailed through the skies and her mother made a name for herself in the courts.
Most children grew up in nurseries. Andromeda had grown up in a lab. The sterile texture of metal and the scent of strange chemicals would always feel more home-like to her than her actual home ever would. Most of her formative memories involved her father's lab.
Her earliest recollection was her parents arguing while she took her first steps unnoticed under the harsh white lights of that scientific haven.
Oh, the arguments.
They were never-ending.
Andromeda used to wonder if it was normal for people's mothers and fathers to descend into screaming matches with each other, if all mothers and fathers bickered about every tiny thing.
One got used to it, she supposed. She had to.
It wasn't like she had siblings she could commiserate with about the experience—it seemed the one thing her parents did agree on was that they didn't want more than one child. She got the idea that maybe even she had been an unexpected surprise. But then again, where was the room for surprise in her parents' lives? They were the kind to plan everything out to a T. Nothing got in the way of their dreams and plans. They were ambitious people.
Besides, she told herself, she wasn't lonely. She had her imagination.
When her parents did get along, they were surprisingly affectionate with each other. Her mother got a longing look in her eye as she eyed her partner from across a room, her father gave her mother special gifts and snuck up from behind to hug her while she played piano.
They kissed each other often, usually after explosive fights. Andromeda used to think it was weird when after a bout of yelling in each other's faces, they would suddenly embrace. A holdover from their childhood love-hate relationship, she supposed.
They'd never quite grown out of it. Though her parents were married, her mother still had a vast array of names for her father. Nerdtron and Freak Brain elicited the most laughter from Andromeda, but Cindy usually defaulted to barking their shared last name. Meanwhile her father often called his wife Vortex, even though she'd long since shed that last name both personally and professionally.
Despite the chaos and tumult of growing up Cindy and Jimmy's child, Andromeda wouldn't have had things any other way. Even if she sometimes wished her parents saw her just a little more.
She'd heard stories about her parents. Sometimes straight from the horse's mouth. Sometimes from her father's parents, who were kind but getting on in age.
Most often, it was from her Aunt Libby and her Uncles Sheen and Carl. Though these people were not her actual relatives, they had always felt like family. In the end, it was they who sat front row at her father's funeral, trying to console her mother and offering a helping hand to Andromeda as she sorted through her father's things and handled his estate.
The stories she'd heard from her parents' best friends made her laugh and ache in equal measure. The more she thought about it, the more she figured that her parents really were meant for each other. There was a direct line from their earliest exploits competing in inter-galactic gameshows and trying to outdo each other in school, to their budding romance.
It was rare, she thought, for a childhood connection to grow into something so sustaining. She sometimes felt like the odd one out, the piece of the puzzle that didn't quite fit into her parents' hard-won love.
But her father had always called her a gift. And she clung on to that, through the hard times.
When Andromeda was a teenager, her parents had one of the biggest arguments of their marriage. And that was saying something.
She remembered catching bits of it from behind closed doors.
"Let me get this straight. You want to leave your wife and kid to go on gallivanting on some space trip you don't know if you'll return from?"
"Cindy, you know I'm not just doing this because I want a fun vacation. I want to use my skills to do something valuable."
"Is it not valuable to care for your family?" Andromeda could tell her mother was beyond livid. But she also sensed deep hurt.
"Of course." Jimmy sighed. "But this is a once in a lifetime opportunity."
"I knew my mother was right about you."
"That's not fair and you know it."
"What if you don't come back?" Cindy's voice broke, presumably because this was the prospect that was truly bothering her.
"Then I trust you to manage. You are strong and capable."
"What if I don't want to be?"
Andromeda pinpointed this as the exact moment when things began to fall apart.
When the idylls of her childhood faded away into ceaseless worry.
Jimmy didn't leave right away. He needed time to prepare for his trip, and so for a couple years, he was still around. He saw her graduate high school, and helped her pick a college to attend (his alma mater, MIT, much to her Yale alumna mother's contempt).
The summer before he left was etched onto her memory permanently. He guarded his time with his family fiercely, turning down every project that came his way. The three of them went on a trip to Europe. They ate ice cream. They watched Jeopardy! together.
And on the last day of that August, as the sun set over their Texan home, and the light filtered through her bedroom window, she watched as her father loaded all of his things into a car sent by NASA, kissed his mother goodbye, and left for the world beyond the world.
It was hard to get used to only having her mother around. Cindy was strict and exacting before her husband's departure, but became doubly so once he was gone.
Andromeda knew that it was a front, though. She saw her mother steal into the yard in the late hours of night when she thought no one would notice, to stare at the sky.
And though Andromeda had her differences with her mother, she never admired her more than she did in those vulnerable moments when the mask fell away and she discovered that Cindy had an abiding love for her father despite his many flaws, and despite his decision to leave them for the betterment of science.
The jewel-like tears that streaked her mother's puffy red face were often angrily wiped away, but Andromeda knew that if they were collected in a jar, they would amount to a small fortune. But a fortune that could never compare to the wealth her father found in the stars.
Andromeda had never wanted for anything in her life, having always had parents who were very well respected and well off financially.
But the first and only time she wished she lived someone else's life was the day that the news broke that her father's mission had succeeded, but at an unbearable cost.
No amount of riches, fame, or reaching out to the sky would bring him back, or put her mother back together.
It was inconceivable really. Cindy Vortex without her Jimmy Neutron. And a little galaxy without her rocket man.
Cindy's eulogy at her husband's funeral was tinged with bitterness.
He turned his back on his first love for his true love. She threw out the accusation like a boomerang, and it seemed to only return to hit her squarely in the chest.
She crumpled with each word. The danger of falling in love with a genius is that his head will always win over his heart.
Once, when we were kids he wanted to drain his brain. Become "normal." I was the one who put a stop to it. He had a beautiful mind. It seemed a shame to throw it away, to drain the very thing that made him unique, that endeared him to me and to others.
And even though his loss has been intolerable for me and my daughter, I have been steeling myself for this since the day I married him. The day the stars would take him back for their own.
Since she was named after a constellation, Andromeda Neutron spent the remainder of her life trying to be a star.
For when she looked up at them, she knew that her father was among friends.