We Are Satellites

by Sarah Pinsker

  After the threes came prioritization. They got the basics early on, rudimentary methods of tuning out nonessential stimuli. It wasn’t until the Army that he understood the need for prioritization. Person on the adjacent roof comes first, then voices in the hall. The rest, even the doctor, is noise. The Army taught him that, except they thought there was an end to noise a finiteness a finity was finity a word. In high school in the Army everywhere everybody talked about the Pilot in different terms than the ones he used. Like it had a beginning and an end. Their noise had a different quality than his. He didn’t know why. He took the tests he passed the tests he did everything he was supposed to do. They all just coped with it better maybe. Maybe he had no cope he was weak somehow defective.

  He climbed the hill from the bus stop. Scanned the parked cars for movement the treetops the rooftops you’re home, soldier, stand down, but he couldn’t. He walked the familiar street the street he’d grown up on the street where he knew he should feel safe. He did feel safe safe-ish anyway but that didn’t mean he knew how to stop to turn off to quiet the instinct to cover every angle.

  He and Julie saw each other at the same time. Julie stood on the front stoop in a striped dress, reading something on her tablet. She stood like she’d just stepped out but he could tell she’d been waiting awhile from the sweat on her upper lip. It was okay he was sweaty too, soaked really, from the effort of watching out without anyone else to watch out with him. He pulled her into a bear hug he was facing the doorway he couldn’t see enough what was behind his back he didn’t know and if her eyes were closed she wasn’t watching the street. He swung her in his arms he’d never done that before but she was lighter than he expected and he needed to see the street the cars the neighbors four houses down watching and smiling. She smelled like her shampoo, like mint and something else, a flower, the kind of thing you wouldn’t remember, like this is what my mom smells like, until you smelled it, and then you relaxed a little, just for a second. The scent gave him the smallest permission to lower his guard, the smallest implication someone else was still watching his back, in a different way than he was used to, a way he remembered but had forgotten.

  She found her footing, ran a hand through her hair, drawing his attention to her own Pilot by her ear. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me they were sending you home? I thought you had another month!”

  “They kept talking about extending the tour and I didn’t want to tell you one thing and then find out another.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Only a couple days,” he lied. She wouldn’t know; he’d had a couple of deployments now where they hadn’t been able to communicate at all, and he hadn’t always had advance notice himself. She seemed to buy it, in any case.

  She pulled him in close again. “I’m not complaining. Just surprised. Like, I would have taken time off to spend time with you or something. I would have cleaned. Your ma was so upset not to be here when you got home, too, but it’s a school day, and Sophie is off somewhere . . .”

  “Since when do you need to clean for me?”

  “I don’t. I haven’t touched anything in your room, beyond vacuuming. I just . . . I have to go to work and I want to be here and hear how you are and I’ve been standing here hoping you’d arrive before I had to leave but now you’re here and . . . it’s so good to see you.”

  He smiled. “Good to see you, too. Go to work. I’ll be fine.”

  “I hate leaving, but I guess you can use some time for yourself after all those flights and whatever else?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Can I bring dinner back? What would you like? Thai? Szechuan?”

  He gave a groan of delight. “Oh God, yes. You don’t even know.”

  “Sweet. The spare key is on the peg if you don’t have yours handy. Help yourself to anything in the house if you’re hungry. Why am I saying that like you’re a guest? It’s your house. Eat. Drink. I love you. I’ll be back soon.”

  She pushed him through the door and headed off. So she’d been waiting for him to make sure he could get in. He felt guilty he hadn’t come the night before, but he’d needed the night to transition.

  He walked through the house his house home. It smelled right, familiar, he couldn’t even say what the right scent was but this was it. The cool old clock in the living room his grandmother’s grandmother clock did its tick-tick-ticking thing as he walked through the rooms and a loud bird did its loud-bird thing somewhere out some window a window must be open somewhere for it to be so loud but he didn’t see an open window.

  His room looked exactly as it should. She’d said she hadn’t touched anything and it didn’t look like she had. Another noise downstairs the icemaker in the fridge doing its icemaker thing. He dropped his bags and went to the kitchen and opened the fridge and found Val’s beer and chugged one he didn’t even like IPA downed two there were eight he left six. Crushed the cans and hid them under the other recycling since it was still morning and he was an adult he was a soldier he could drink if he wanted but his parents would judge even if they said they wouldn’t.

  He sat in the chair he and Sophie used to fight over, the armchair that reclined violently when you swung the lever. He swung the lever and his feet elevated. It was too comfortable too soft, so soft he could sleep, really, and it didn’t feel right to sleep. He stood, paced the room, finally situated himself on the couch arm. When they were kids they got yelled at for sitting on the arms for climbing on the back for swinging the armchair lever too hard, but he wasn’t going to do any harm sitting on the arm. It was a good place. Not comfortable not soft. From there he got the full view from the bay window, five six seven eight houses’ worth of across the street, neighbors coming and going, the mail carrier in shorts and a broad-brimmed hat and earbuds making her slow way along the street singing to herself.

  Even here even here home his family’s house home even here David kept watch. He had some memory that his head had been quieter here had some hope that when he returned he would be quiet again but it was false a false memory a memory of before the Pilot sped him up turned him on filled his head with constant input vigilance noise protective noise. He watched he watched he listened he watched he watched.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  SOPHIE

  The figure sitting stiffly on the couch arm in the front room was familiar even in shadow. He wore his Army Combat Uniform, which didn’t do much to camouflage him against the leather couch. He’d abandoned his hat on the end table, and his head was shorn of curls. He had no expression on his face.

  David leapt from the couch the instant she entered, breaking into a wide grin. He crossed the space between them in three long strides to pull her into a bear hug, lifting her from her feet.

  “Softserve!”

  “Davey Not-So-Wavy!” She ran a hand over the soft fuzz on his head. “You can put me down now.”

  “Yes, sir.” He lowered her, but didn’t let go. She held on, too, for a long minute. He felt wiry beneath the thick uniform, all muscle. When he finally relaxed his grip on her, she shut the door and kicked her bag to the side, then collapsed on the reclining chair catty-corner from the couch. He crossed to the door as well, to bolt it, then returned to settle into the couch this time, though Sophie got the impression it was a deliberate attempt to look at ease, not actual comfort. She bent to unlace her own combat boots, ashamed for a moment of the trappings of war—the boots, David’s old jacket—she had adopted. She wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her in them before, and she felt as if she were playacting.

  “What’s with the boots, soldier?” he asked, as if reading her mind.

  She hoped the dim light obscured the flood of color to her face. “Nothing. They’re comfortable. You wear them all day, too, right?” He nodded and she relaxed. She put her boots behind the chair, out of view, and tucked her feet under her.

  “Where are they?�
� she asked, deliberately changing the subject.

  “Ma is still at work, and Mom went to get takeout in my honor. You have no idea how much I’ve missed Chinese food.”

  “I don’t think we’ve had it the whole time you were gone. At least not any night I’ve been here, I don’t think.”

  “Civilian sacrifice for the sake of the soldiers. I love it.” As he said it, his body tensed and his eyes darted to the window. Sophie squinted and spotted their neighbor Mr. Winters, walking his old bloodhound past their house.

  “Is it weird to be home?” she asked, trying to bring David’s attention back inside. His eyes returned to her, but she could tell his attention was split. Piloted people always thought they were being subtle when they chose to expand their focus, but they often let their jaws go slightly slack, and the muscles around their mouths. She didn’t know if anyone else noticed.

  “Weird but good,” he said. “I think it’ll take a while to get used to being here. To not being there.”

  “I keep wanting to poke you to see if you’re real.”

  “I’ll thank you to not poke me. Did you even know I was coming back today? When Mom went to get food I offered to go with her but she said I should wait here for you.”

  Sophie shook her head. “I asked them not to tell me. I figured I’d see you when you got here and I would get a nice surprise out of it.”

  “That makes sense, I guess. It’s weird, but so are you.”

  She stuck her tongue out. How quickly they reverted to their childhood relationship. They didn’t have an adult one, not yet; he’d been gone for too long. In any case, she was glad she’d stuck with the surprise story. She didn’t think it would benefit him to hear she’d chosen not to be told when he was coming home not because she liked surprise, but because she didn’t like anticipation. She didn’t like counting days, or the queasy feeling of almost-here. On the rare occasions when she felt auras before her seizures, that was what they felt like: an imminent arrival. The pairing of the two feelings made her uncomfortable. She felt like she might bring him bad luck if she hoped too hard for his return.

  He glanced at the door and seconds later Sophie heard the dead bolt slide. Having Combat David around was like having a dog in the house. Every movement outside was a cause for concern, or at least curiosity; thankfully he didn’t bark. He was on his feet and moving toward the door before it had swung open, and had Val in a hug before she was fully into the house. From where she sat, Sophie saw pure joy on Val’s face. Val dropped her messenger bag next to where Sophie had left hers and hugged David, who was not only taller than her, but twice as broad through the shoulders. Sophie didn’t know how it was possible for him to take up so much space when he was so skinny. Maybe it was the uniform.

  “Why are you two sitting in the dark?” Val asked, turning on a lamp. She’d stopped hugging David, but kept her hand on his sleeve.

  “Hadn’t bothered turning on the light,” answered Sophie, though she didn’t actually know David’s reason. They hadn’t really gotten beyond superficial greetings yet. Dancing around a relationship that had been put on hiatus for ages. They had messaged each other a little bit during his deployments, but those interactions had been superficial, too.

  Julie arrived with a plastic bag in each hand, a smiley face emblazoned on each. The smiley scales of justice, weighing her down equally on both sides with rice and dumplings and spring rolls and chicken. Sophie watched from her easy chair, not removing herself from the family, but observing briefly from the outside, as she had often done.

  Theirs was a strange family. Four people, but only one blood bond. She didn’t feel any less their child, any more than she doubted for a second that Val, who had still not stopped holding on to David, was his mother in every sense even if she hadn’t given birth to him. Even with his new adult face, he looked more like Val than Julie, held himself more like Val than Julie.

  She knew she didn’t look like any of them, but it didn’t matter. They were bonded by nineteen years in the same house together, the rest of them longer. Family was all of those things: blood, but also common experience. Whatever had happened to David while he was away, he had changed. His edges were different. He made all the motions of home without looking like he was fully with them. She could certainly relate.

  * * *

  • • •

  The dinner conversation avoided every interesting topic. Sophie wanted to hear about David’s experiences, the real ones, and what had made him so jumpy, so attuned to his surroundings. She could only imagine. She’d never written to him about the movement, so she wasn’t surprised he didn’t bring it up, but she still wanted to tell him more about it, wanted his opinion on the subject, touchy as it might be.

  Instead, their mothers steered the conversation as if they were navigating a ship through rocky waters. She didn’t blame them for trying to make his first meal at home a joyous one, though it did feel forced. Save the contentious issues for later, or let David raise them when he was ready. They asked him about plane travel, the places he’d gone, as if he were some jet-set playboy, rather than a soldier. They spoke about their jobs and the neighborhood. He let them guide the topics at hand, and Sophie stayed mostly silent.

  After the meal, Julie went into the kitchen and returned with a round cake, the words welcome home! scrolled on the frosting in script, and david in block letters. How long had they known today was the day? They’d certainly managed to keep it from Sophie. She knew she’d asked them to, but she was surprised they’d been able to pull it off.

  “So,” she asked finally, her mouth full of ice cream cake, “what are you doing next?” That had been the other question she was surprised nobody else was asking. She realized too late that there might be a reason. “I mean, if you want to talk about it.”

  He maintained a steady rhythm of cake to mouth for another few bites, then turned to look at her. “I’m leaving the military.”

  Sophie’s mouth dropped open, genuine shock she then papered over with a smile, in case the moms already knew and she’d been left out of the knowing; she would never have expected him to say that particular sentence in a million years. Both mothers exchanged a glance, so he must not have written about this decision. The surprise was on everyone this time.

  “Leaving?” Hopefulness tried to bust through concern on Val’s face.

  “Yeah, my commitment is over, and I could re-up, but the timing is right to make a jump to private-sector work.” He tipped his plate and let the last of the ice cream swirl from one side to the other. As a kid he would have licked it, but now he watched it run.

  “Will that cause any problems with your military benefits?” Leave it to Julie to quiz him on a practical detail instead of celebrating the news.

  “If nobody else is going to say it, I will,” Sophie said before David could answer their mother. “David, I have never been so relieved at anything in my whole life. I’m proud of what you’ve done for the country and all that, but I am ten thousand times happier to have my big brother back.”

  David grinned at her, though the smile didn’t reach his eyes. Still, he looked relieved. “There’s a whole separation process. I already found a job, so there won’t be a gap in my benefits. And I’m not being discharged involuntarily, in case any of you were thinking that.”

  “Why would we think that?” asked Julie.

  David shrugged. “I don’t know. People get weird ideas into their heads. I wanted to make sure you know this is my choice.”

  “I don’t care whose—” Val picked up the melting cake and left the room midsentence. Sophie heard the freezer open and shut, then Val returned. “I don’t care whose choice it was. I’m happy you made it out in one piece. That’s one worry off my worry list forever.”

  “Now you just have to worry about car crashes and random shootings and killer viruses like the civilian families do.” Sophie thought it was f
unny, but the others gave her looks of various degrees of disgust. Everyone was a critic. She should know better than to bring up other things to worry about in any case, since those lists invariably included her.

  “So, what’s the new job?” she asked in hopes of getting the conversation back on track.

  David smiled and tapped the light above his ear. “It should be really interesting work. Balkenhol Neural Labs.”

  Sophie was on her feet so quickly she knocked her plate to the floor. “Balkenhol? BNL? You’re not serious.” She clenched her hands into fists, then dropped them to her sides. He had to be joking.

  The smile had vanished from David’s face, replaced by confusion. “It’s a good job. Pilot ambassador. It pays well. I’ll get to travel to interesting places without people shooting at me.”

  “Somebody please tell me he’s joking.” Sophie wiped a tear from her cheek and fought the others back. She would not cry. She was a soldier. She turned on her heel and headed straight for the front door.

  Once outside, she realized she’d probably been rash to leave with no ID, no cash, no phone, no backpack. She couldn’t go downtown. Still, she had to go somewhere, now that she’d left.

  She walked to her old primary school’s playground, five blocks away. She crossed the shredded rubber and chose a swing. The evening was cooler than the previous ones had been, and only a couple of people were out walking their dogs, their blue Pilot lights bobbing and blinking like fireflies as they navigated the darkness. One light got closer. He stepped under the streetlamp, and she saw it was David.