Especially when other cops are watching, sniping and sparring . . .
Especially with a TV news crew capturing all of it . . .
“Since when does Dad decide to dash back to work at this hour, government shutdown or not?” I have to ask, because what Mom’s telling me seems close to preposterous. “When I talked to him earlier today, I got the impression that everything was status quo. It’s not like we haven’t been furloughed before more times than I can count. Is everything all right?”
“We were in the kitchen when his cell phone rang,” Mom’s quiet voice, and I turn up the volume, listening for nuances that might hint what’s going on. “He wouldn’t say what the problem was, but he had to leave. Didn’t finish dinner, grabbed a few things and his coat. And was picked up.”
“Picked up? And you definitely got the impression there was a, quote, ‘problem.’ As in something urgent, something that’s gone wrong.”
“I sensed his concern, yes,” with hesitation in her tone. “And such short notice. To be honest, he didn’t look happy. Not that I’d expect him to be happy about being called out in the middle of the night in subzero temperatures, not knowing when he’s coming back.”
“If there’s something urgent going on, I can’t imagine I wouldn’t know about it. Do you have any idea who called him?” And I can’t get Dick out of my head, reminding me of that silly tin can telephone game again.
The two of us connected by a string, only this one isn’t visible and what’s going on isn’t child’s play. At least, that’s how it’s felt ever since I was sitting inside this very truck with him. It’s as if we’re still together. But we’re not. Yet I sense him, can’t break the connection, as if his energy has me locked in a tractor beam.
What have you done, Carme? What have you done!
“I don’t know what’s happened,” Mom replies, and I don’t trust the way she says it.
“What’s happened.” As if something has.
“But I got the sense they were headed to Langley first, seems I overheard a mention of the hangar. Then maybe Wallops, at least I overheard it mentioned,” her voice drifting from speakers in the dash. “I’m figuring because of what’s in the works for the launch? In addition to the Earth-observation instrument that was sent up from Cape Canaveral just the other week.”
“LEAR. I know you’ve been busy with lesson plans that show kids how to build such a thing. I know how proud you are.” As guilt kicks in.
My NASA educator mother has no idea that LEAR is a ruse.
“So proud I could pop. Built by students in rural Iowa of all places,” she can’t resist adding. “Winning the NASA national science competition, as you may recall, and it’s all the more amazing because it just so happens that Mount Ayr Community School is where Peggy Whitson graduated. The first female commander of the International Space Station, and she also holds the record for the number of days a woman has lived in space. Almost two years total.”
“Qualifying her to take over the bridge of the Starship Enterprise and be issued the first astro-passport, as far as I’m concerned,” feeling worse by the moment.
“Imagine how those Iowa schoolkids are going to feel hanging out at Mission Control in Wallops, watching her in real time install the LEAR in outer space.”
“I can’t imagine,” meaning it in more ways than one.
“I’m so excited, you know, since my lesson plans are involved. I can’t wait to see how thrilled those kids will be when they watch their instrument being installed by our astronauts.”
They wouldn’t be thrilled if they knew the truth, I can’t help but think. Their washing machine–size box will make it to a research platform eventually, just not on this launch. The students, the teachers, the public will be none the wiser, and it’s not my favorite thing to fool anyone, including children and my mom. Even if by no choice of my own, I do it constantly.
Not that Mom wouldn’t understand the sleight of hand required if we’re to keep certain information under wraps and away from the scrutiny of those nations and entities that would be much too interested. My NASA mother would understand. But she can’t be told that the Low Earth Atmospheric Reader wasn’t actually launched two weeks ago. Something else was that isn’t simply another scientific instrument for measuring ozone or global warming, or deflecting space debris moving 10 times faster than a speeding bullet.
I’m quite confident Mom has no clue about what’s actually being installed in about three hours during a complicated and dangerous EVA. She’d have to be in bed with the intelligence community to be aware that her prize-winning Earth-observing instrument from the cornfields of Iowa is actually a quantum machine, a node. And that in a difficult and dangerous feat of engineering, the two US astronauts currently on the Station will bolt it to the steel structure, where it will live in the near-absolute-zero vacuum conditions that are quantum computing’s natural habitat.
Cold and quiet in the black box of space. Surrounded by the Station’s 16 habitable modules hosting astronauts and cosmonauts from nations competitive with us even as we try to get along, leaving our politics and differences on the ground where they belong. Mom wouldn’t know and maybe my father doesn’t either that once the node is installed, NASA will have established the beginning of a quantum network.
Moving us closer to creating a quantum internet, and to whoever is the fastest and the smartest go the spoils. Whoever harnesses quantum first rules this planet and beyond.
“. . . It’s just astonishing what young people can do this day and age, and that they care enough about spaceship Earth to worry about global warming, to want to save our farmland, forests, seacoasts and polar bears,” my educator mom goes on about LEAR.
“It really is extraordinary,” as I feel bad about leading her down the same faux primrose path as everyone else.
“Imagine your teacher challenging you to build an ozone detector among other things. And abracadabra! You do it, and it’s going into space,” she says, and among other things might be the understatement of the century.
26
“EXACTLY,” I answer, not letting on how worried I am about the spacewalk, and the rocket launch from Wallops, and everything. “Yes, we’ve got a resupply headed up to the Station, in addition to the EVA, and if you imagine the telemetry involved . . . ? I can only assume Dad was called in for all that.”
And that’s not true either. I’m not assuming any such thing. More likely, Dick is directing what’s going on, and I’m suspicious about who picked up my father. Or who he’s meeting and if any of this is connected to my MIA sister. How can I not think it is after what Dick told me?
To listen to him, Carme is out of whack and off grid. The very conditions that he said are the most dangerous to any vehicle. Loss of control. Loss of signal. Added to that, one Pandora person has vanished, and another is suspiciously dead. If my sister is truly involved somehow, then what’s happened to her, what really? It’s as if she’s been horribly reprogrammed, and what do they think she might do next?
“But Jeez,” I’m saying sincerely to my mom, “I hate to think of Dad at Wallops in this weather. And it’s a terrible drive after dark with that one-lane road in and out. I sure hope he’s not headed there.”
“Same-ol’, same-ol’,” is what she has to say about the way any of us live. “As you well know, my dear, when the going gets tough, that’s when some of us get going while the rest of the world runs home and locks the door. And Jeez is right, poor George. I’m just glad he’s not driving.”
“Who picked him up?”
“He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask,” she replies, and I’m not sure I believe her.
“Maybe you noticed what kind of vehicle might have pulled up to get him?”
“An SUV, big, caught a glimpse when he went out the
door, but I couldn’t tell who was driving. You know how dark it is even with all my lights everywhere. Anyway, I didn’t go outside and don’t know more than that.”
“I guess he’ll stay in the dorm at the old navy base,” I suppose, and I’ve spent my share of nights at Wallops in the World War II bunker-like building, sleeping in a single bed, not much else including food or a bathroom to yourself.
“The dorm is pretty stark but the safest thing if we’re clobbered,” Mom’s disembodied voice. “But last I heard it’s hopeful that we won’t get a direct hit, that the worst is going to miss us.”
“As usual, no one knows what the weather’s going to do until it does it,” I reply. “But it sure would be good if the launch went as planned, and I suspect it will as close as we’re getting. Just a few hours out.”
“I believe the cargo going up includes Christmas goodies for the astronauts, not just ours but all of them. A shame if they get the Grinch this year instead,” Mom worries.
“Dad didn’t give you any indication what’s expected? Why he was called instead of some other flight dynamicist? I mean, not that anyone can hold a candle to him. But why Dad? Depending what’s going on, why not someone else?”
She says she wondered the same thing but doesn’t know. Nor does she have an answer as to why he wouldn’t have gone earlier today. What’s so urgent? If something is screwy, why haven’t I been told, and is whatever happening something Fran knows? I don’t trust much what Mom is saying, and every other second, she asks me where I am. It’s as if I can’t get home soon enough, and I tell her I’m passing the old cemetery.
Now closing in on Francis Asbury Elementary School, where Carme and I attended until the 5th grade. Except to be accurate, we skipped the 1st and 5th grades, meaning we were there all of three years before skipping other grades in Eaton Middle School and Phoebus High, finishing up by the age of 15. Our precollege education was public and accelerated, and I feel sweetly sad, passing the single-story brick elementary school with its circular drive, the old hardwood trees strung with holiday lights.
The locals start their decorations early, in some instances at Halloween (my mom) or the day after Thanksgiving (most everybody else). Mailboxes, chimneys, porches and rooftops are wrapped, festooned and dripping with glittering strands of electric colors. Illuminated plastic Santas shake in the wind as if Old Saint Nick is laughing hard. And maybe he is. Although nothing is amusing or festive to me right now.
Not when one Pandora employee is missing and presumed murdered, while another one’s alleged suicide most certainly was gruesomely staged. And then precisely and methodically unstaged for my benefit. Making sure I would know. Making sure I wouldn’t let someone get away with murder. And also to be warned, which I am every time I think of the death trap rigging that resembled bent-pipe telemetry.
Or at least this is the beginning of the bizarre theory playing out in my mind nonstop. One that factors in my sister being connected to one or both events, and therefore presumed to be some kind of deranged murderer. To be out of touch and out of control like some autonomous aircraft outfitted with a warhead. When in fact I don’t know that she’s hurt anyone at all.
She wouldn’t.
There’s no real evidence so far. Not that I can see. But that doesn’t mean my brazen other half hasn’t incriminated herself somehow, and now is nowhere to be found. I believe that even Dick doesn’t know where she is, and it would seem that in the past few short hours I’ve managed to cross into another dimension.
I find myself constantly checking my phone for an email, a text, and at the same time not wanting to hear from Carme because it’s easier if I don’t. Doesn’t hurt as much. Isn’t as scary. As if I’m supposed to change the way I feel about her with the flip of a switch. Instantly. What doesn’t Dick understand about loyalty?
He has no right asking me to choose. It’s not up to anyone but me to decide how I’m going to handle things with her when it’s time.
00:00:00:00:0
“WOULD YOU care to tell me what happened in there?” asking it hours later, and I can smell my shame as he pours us another drink.
“Thanks, but I shouldn’t. I think I’ve been reckless enough for one day.” Smelling bourbon and my damaged flesh as I sit at the kitchen table, my bandaged hand out of sight in my lap.
Detecting the iron odor of blood and adhesive.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself!” Liz rustling up lunch. “It could have happened to anyone.”
Staring at the TV mounted on the wall, ironically turned to her show, a taped episode of Kitchen Combat. Texas Rangers versus military cops duking it out during a Tex-Mex cook-off and margarita marathon. Watching Liz in two places at once. In the past on a recording while being with her in the flesh. Right now. Inside her kitchen.
Having drinks with Dick after almost losing my fingertip. Still might. Won’t know for a while if the avulsed pad glued back is viable.
“The bagels weren’t thawed all the way, and I pushed too hard with the knife.” Just the thought makes my finger throb as I finally answer Dick’s question. “Trying to slice them in half for toasting . . .”
“When I asked what happened, that’s not what I meant.” Looking at me with a glint in his eye like a pixel gone bad.
Or a gravitational grin or vague reflected light from an invisible distant planet. A pull of disapproval that’s new. Indicating disappointment. A change of heart. Finally finding out I don’t measure up.
“I meant why is everything always your fault, Calli?” Getting up as his bombshell TV star wife walks over with her famous bean burritos smothered in green chili.
“That’s a pretty tough thing to say.” Liz setting down our food, always taking my side, doesn’t matter if I don’t deserve it. “Be nice, Dick.”
“He’s right, and I’m sorry.” I can’t look at him. “I take full responsibility.”
“And that’s the sort of BS I don’t want to hear again.” Taking a bite of burrito, using his fork. “If you’re going to be helpful to me ultimately . . . ? I mean, do you want that, Calli?” Dick pinning me like a butterfly to a board.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you need to be more like your sister,” he says, and the way that feels, there are no words.
“I’ll never be as good at certain things . . .”
“I mean dammit, Calli? You need to quit caring so much. You’ve got to care but not care. At times, you can’t care, period.”
“Don’t always say you’re sorry.” Liz is quick to remind me I’ve got nothing to apologize about.
And yet the very reason Carme stopped caring about anything very much is because of what I did to her. I wasn’t my sister’s keeper, and something bad got milled into her chip that wasn’t there before.
00:00:00:00:0
UNABLE to stomach the notion of snitching on her, of reporting back to him or anyone, I’m tied in knots. Does he really expect me to pick him over my identical twin?
Maybe I’ll take orders, I think hotly. Maybe I won’t, getting more offended by the moment. Not sure what I’ll do, and as we say in quantum computing, it all depends. Before tonight, throwing my sister under the bus or not wasn’t a coin to flip. A choice to make.
“. . . I need to talk to her . . . ,” hearing Dick as he sat in my truck, staring at the back of Dodd Hall.
Until now I’ve had no reason to question her behavior. Never before has there been a suggestion of criminal activity. I know she’s done a lot of things, including taking out bad guys. But in the line of duty. Justifiably.
“. . . She’s capable . . .”
But in the line of duty. Justifiably, and I can’t believe I’m even having these thoughts, and screw that, screw it all. I’m not going to promise anything to anyone, and I ease up on the gas, slowing my police
truck at the entrance of our mile-long unpaved shared driveway. Black-velvet dark, leading to the cove where my dad grew up like his father and grandfather before him. Going back to when Lincoln was assassinated, the Chases have been rooted here. Free to be who and what we are, believing people are more alike than different.
Except I found out in short order not everyone feels the same way. The tree-lined lane I’m driving slowly along may look peaceful enough, but once upon a time it was the scene of a feud worthy of the Hatfields and McCoys. This was in early days when Carme and I hadn’t entered Earth’s atmosphere yet, not quite born, and therefore we didn’t witness the invasion firsthand.
But we’ve certainly gotten the lowdown about the clan of unpleasant nonrelatives who immigrated to Hampton from the land of Yankees. Not that I’ve got anything against the North, only against uncouth and ignorant aggressors from anywhere. Flat-earthers, Neanderthals, I have plenty of sobriquets for the tribe that managed to infiltrate the Chase’s tiny hamlet on Back River and start a land dispute among other squabbles that on occasion turned near violent.
Resulting in my shotgun-toting paternal grandmother (may Judi rest in peace) taking matters into her own hands as the women in my family do. Going out in the dark of night to plant pink and white dogwood trees down the middle of the driveway, her not-so-subtle message simple. Pink for the women who will blow you away if you mess with us. And white for, well, those trashy neighbors who used their side of the driveway to come and go while our folks went about their business on the other.
Over the years, the bad would move on and more good came to settle, and thankfully those less gentle days are over. Nobody skirmishing. No civil wars of uncouth aggression. Just people coming and going. Busy being busy. Too consumed by social media and binge-watching whatever’s streaming to notice things going on right in front of them. I don’t know all the neighbors anymore, and many don’t stay on the water during what they consider the off-season.
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