Wearing her favorite Saturday chessboard dress, Murray’s mom made her son a mountainous bowl of Kraft mac & cheese, but after just two bites, he began pushing the globbed-together irradiated yellow elbows back and forth, from one side of the bowl to the other.
She asked him if everything was okay.
Define okay, Murray said.
You seem preoccupied, she said.
I am preoccupied. Almost constantly.
She sat down across from him at the small round brown table under their prized Pizza Hut-style lamp’s dim yellow light and asked him what was wrong.
You don’t seem like yourself, Murray.
It’s Mario, he said.
She shook her head. Sorry—Mario?
Yes, I have to keep jumping over barrels that are rolling toward me. Do you know how tiring that gets?
There are people you can talk to, she said. You don’t seem like yourself.
Right, because I’m Mario, he said, his expression unchanging. I don’t know who keeps throwing the barrels at me, but I don’t think they like me very much. It’s wearing me down. And there’s something else.
What is it, sweetheart?
I can’t stop thinking about someone, Murray said, lowering his head, rubbing his hands together.
A girl? she asked.
No.
A boy then.
No.
It’s okay, you can tell me, she said, placing a hand on his arm.
It’s E.T.
Oh, she said. You mean the alien.
That’s a little reductive, mom. I’m sure no one refers to him as “the alien,” at least not on his planet, and he’s not on his planet, you know, he’s stuck on ours. There’s something that happens to me when his heart lights up, with that red glow.
What happens? she asked.
He can see into my mind and I can see into his. And all I want to do is get on my bicycle and ride up into the sky with him.
Mario, his mom said, looking down, a small smile on her face.
Yes mom.
You’re 44 now and your Dad and I think . . . She glanced up, hesitating.
What? You can tell me.
Well, your Dad and I think you should try leaving 1982. Just for a little bit.
Murray blinked hard, rubbing his ears. What, you mean for good?
It seems like it’s so hard for you to let go of things here, she said, a warm kind of melancholy in her voice.
No, it’s not hard to let go, said Murray. I just don’t want to. I want to be with E.T. There’s a difference, mom.
I hear you, she said. I hear what you’re saying. But it seems like maybe 2025 or 2026 is a better fit for you. You’re forward thinking. I’ve read about it in those Popular Mechanics magazines you’ve been collecting, that people who come back here eventually can’t wait to return.
Well maybe I’m not like all those other people, mom. Maybe I don’t want to be possessed.
What do you mean possessed? she asked.
By the small rectangular slabs, he said. The ones they carry in their pockets. The ones they can’t stop touching. Maybe I had to come back to 1982 to make mix tapes and jump barrels and solve my Rubik’s Cube. There’s only one green square missing from that side I showed you. Besides, E.T. says I shouldn’t leave. He’s going home, but says he’ll be right here. Murray placed his hand over the left side of his chest, over his heart.
What about the Cold War? she asked.
Murray shrugged and said he thought there would always be missiles of one form or another pointed at us. It doesn’t mean we are doomed to a nuclear holocaust, he argued. When you sleep in the basement, you don’t think about it as much.
His mom seemed even more cautious all of a sudden.
Murr—I mean Mario. Yes? She placed her hands on his cheeks. They felt like cold plastic mittens.
E.T. isn’t real, she said. He’s a fictional character in a very good movie.
Well maybe he isn’t real to you, mom. But to me, he’s the one who knows everything and has all the answers and wants the best for me. Not that you don’t want the best for me. It’s just different coming from him. Spiritually different.
She shook her head. I knew we should have gotten you Bar Mitzvahed. I don’t know how your father and I let you talk us out of it.
Murray looked at his watch and got up from the table. I’m going outside to the woods behind the house to wait for him, he said.
Well, if that’s what you need to do, then go ahead, she replied, avoiding eye contact, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice. What should I tell your father?
Murray paused with his hand on the sliding glass door that led out onto the deck from the kitchen. He thought about it.
Tell him I’ve gone to feed the raccoons. He’ll love that.
Then make sure you take the bag of marshmallows I bought this week from ACME, she said.
Murray snapped his fingers, went to their pantry, and grabbed the bag of extra large marshmallows. No Reese’s Pieces?
She frowned, looked up at the ceiling, and muttered something under her breath.
No worries… E.T. will probably like these too. He’s not picky. That’s what I like most about him, mom, how easy-going he is. Especially when we spend time together in the clearing, neither of us saying much of anything as we look up at the stars searching for the smallest sign of movement, some blue or reddish streak that will slow down and curve back toward us, the sign of everything we don’t want to admit to ourselves—about the way the universe really works, how we’re not the center of it, not even close to the center of it. But they never forgot about us. They were always planning to come back. It’s because E.T. sees something in me. He knows I’m going to be somebody one day and do something of great importance, as long as I stay in 1982 while remembering what 43 years into the future actually looks like.
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