Ripley
“You look like Ripley,” he says. It’s a Sunday night. “You look like Ripley from Alien.” I’m wearing a purple loose tank and black boy shorts. My hair is wild around my face. It’s probably the nicest thing anyone has said about me, about my looks, at least.
Ripley can do anything. She can suck aliens out into the vacuum of space. She can fall asleep for decades only to find out her entire family died while she was lost in space and still have the capacity to love and fight and survive. She can see right through Paul Reiser. She can trust robots again, even after an evil robot sabotages her crew. She can fire flaming guns and have the fear in her trembling lip but maintain a steely eye.
I am no Ripley. I let the highway dust settle over her heads, into our hair, under our nails, onto our floor. I look him in the face, not quite an alien to human staring contest. Still, I turn around on my heels careful to follow my footsteps. I do not disturb the dust.
I curl up in bed beside him. I turn on the Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan, not Hayley Mills. He falls asleep. He snores.
AB
