God is an Astronaut

by Alyson Foster

  To: Arthur Danielson

  Cc:

  Bcc:

  Subject: Re: lead with your left side

  Yes, well, in case you were wondering who won that one: our dinner with Theo is now scheduled for next week.

  Arthur, I’m losing ground every single day to that man’s charm offensive. After Liam, Corinne was the next one to succumb. Trying to keep her away from the camera is almost a full-time job. I have resorted to carrying around an old lab timer. If it dings after five minutes, and she’s not in the room, then I get up and go find her. I’ve managed (I think) to make it clear that Lacroix doesn’t want endless footage of her dance routines, so she is now resorting to stealthier tactics. She hangs out for a while in her bedroom, and then when she knows I’m distracted, she swaps out her T-shirt and shorts for her Sleeping Beauty ball gown or the purple tutu from her last dance recital, and then she goes to find Lacroix. She sidles into his frame by pretending to be distracted by some other innocuous activity—fiddling with the blinds, say, or restacking the books on the coffee table, or flicking her hair, like a movie extra gone rogue—and someone has to go grab her. What? she protests. What? This cunning side of her is new, and I’m not sure whether to be impressed or disturbed by it, Arthur.

  Jack looked as though he was going to be a holdout, but Lacroix won him over by showing him how to fasten a tiny fish-eye camera into the elbow of the dining room chandelier with a handful of bread-bag twist ties. When I came downstairs the other day, the two of them were standing on chairs, making faces into the lens—Jack pulling open his nostrils as far as he could with his fingers, and Lacroix baring his teeth like fangs.

  “Jack,” I said. “I walked by the hermit crab tank, and they’re sniffing each other hungrily. Would you mind feeding them, please, before they resort to cannibalism?”

  He heaved a long, extravagant sigh—that’s at least one way he takes after me—and jumped down from the chair with a crash. When he left the room, I turned back to Lacroix, who was adjusting the twist ties, twirling the ends around one another with a surprising delicacy. You wouldn’t think someone with fingers like rolls of quarters would be able to pull off something so finicky.

  “Don’t you have some spacemen to film?” I said.

  He pushed his glasses up into his hair and peered appraisingly down at me. “Of course,” he said. He let go of the chandelier and started to make a heavy-footed descent, but I tapped his knee and pointed up to the camera, which was spinning above our heads in plumes of disturbed chandelier-dust.

  “Don’t forget to take that with you,” I said.

  I suppose it’s paranoid to think that Lacroix would accidentally-on-purpose leave cameras up without announcing their presence. After all, he made a point of telling Liam three times that he was putting one up in the library where the occasional Spaceco confab is still being held. But Lacroix has taken over the living room, clearing Jack’s Erector set off the coffee table so he can fit his mega-trillion-pixel monitor on it. Half of the nights now, he’s in there, sitting in the armchair with his headphones on, watching the brilliant history of the day flicker past in some kind of trance. Which means the dining room is mine. Last night I was sitting in there, writing to you, and when I looked up, he was standing there in the dark doorway—no warning, just boom. He should have been accompanied by one of those forte horror-movie piano chords. I was so startled that I fumbled a keystroke and somehow hit the delete button. And—poof—my e-mail vanished into the ether.

  Most of whatever I was writing you doesn’t matter now anyway, but I did want to thank you for the words of encouragement. I know they didn’t come easily. I know how hard it is to talk/type something when one is biting one’s tongue, metaphorically speaking.

  I’d forgotten about your appearance on that PBS special. You don’t need to pretend that there’s any chance in hell that I’m ever going to come close to rivaling your performance, Arthur. It’s not a matter of “relaxing” or “being yourself.” Honestly, being myself is the last thing I want to do. Not everyone has that gift, that shine, that fearless sincerity, that whatever-it-is. You do, Arthur. You have it to burn. Here’s another thing I shouldn’t confess to: sometimes watching you in your element, at your most golden moments—it made me a little sick. I wasn’t envious although maybe I should have been. I think the feeling was something even more pernicious. I think it was fear.

  That’s the reason why, the day after the special aired, I didn’t say anything about it. I was standing in the hall when you came in that morning—I don’t know if you even remember this—and Moira went running toward you in full-blown screech mode, flapping her hands and squealing: ArTHUR, ArTHUR, you were aMAzing!!! And I just turned around and went into my office and closed the door.

  Not long after that you knocked. (Actually, I’m pretty sure you just barged right in. Knocking has never been your style, has it?)

  “Well?” you said.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  You took it perfectly in stride. You accused me of being constitutionally incapable of giving credit where credit was due. Arthur, tell me you were joking.

  Well, too little too late, here it is: I DVR’d that damn special. I hung on to it for over two years. Then this past summer I erased it in a moment of resolve. Actually it was a fit of pique disguised as some sort of self-help Buddhist tenet, the one that advises you against clinging to what is lost.

  Anyway, you haven’t seen my face in a while, so perhaps you don’t recall that my right side’s definitely my best one. I’m going to do my damnedest to keep Lacroix on that side, but I don’t know if it will work. He is one wily bastard.

  You, on the other hand, look just charming from whatever angle. I absolutely remember that.

  Jess

  From: Jessica Frobisher

  Sent: Thursday, July 3, 2014 10:59 pm

  To: Arthur Danielson

  Cc:

  Bcc:

  Subject: Re: recriminations

  Oh, please. Moira’s always had a thing for you. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. Even your lousy man-radar should have been able to pick up those signals. They were about as subtle as one of those air-raid warnings.

  Yes, Elle’s around. I do like how even you, btw, from a distance of a thousand miles, are interested in that woman’s whereabouts. Goldilocks has been involved in the filming over at the Livonia office, but my impression is that she’s much more hands-off than her husband. “A free spirit” is what Lacroix calls her, with what is, as far as I can tell, Arthur, wholehearted admiration. “An ice queen” is what the Spaceco guys say, with obvious envy. There are entire days when she takes Abah, hijacks the Lacroixs’ van, and disappears. Someone told me that she’s hanging out in Detroit, filming all those grand imploding train stations and movie theaters and courtyards gone to seed, the ones with trees growing out from between the paving stones and wild pheasants roosting in the fountains.

  I’m pretty sure that she’s more intrigued by American urban blight, our rack and ruin, than she is by Spaceco’s existential crisis. (This makes me like her, gratefully, despite the fact that she can hardly be bothered to speak two words to me.) It’s hard to say for certain, because the Lacroixs converse almost entirely in French. No one from our party can understand it, although thanks to two semesters in college, I can catch a few words like fly balls out of the air. Just enough for wild speculation.

  One more thing before I sign off again. You still haven’t told me your ETA for coming stateside. Are you thinking about what classes you’re going to be teaching this fall? I think Thom said there’s still an unclaimed 265 section. I know I sure as hell don’t want it.

  Have a good night, Professor Danielson.

  Jess

  From: Jessica Frobisher

  Sent: Monday, July 7, 2014 5:16 am

  To: Arthur Danielson

 
; Cc:

  Bcc:

  Subject: eavesdropping

  Well, think about it. Three undergrad sections is about all I can take.

  I just got back from taking out the trash. I normally try to get the cans down to the bottom of the hill before dusk, when the raccoons come out. It’s always been a little dicey with them, and this year it’s been worse than usual. Maybe the mild winter caused a population spike—something has made them meaner and more territorial. More than once I’ve come out to find them pulling off the lids, working away at the airtight latches with their canny, prehensile little fingers. When you startle them, they sit up on their haunches and hiss at you like harpies in lumpy gray bathrobes and smudged eyeliner, clutching their rotten apple-core treasure and showing their fangs. There’s a warning there, I think, about the potential for malevolence, even in small things. I still think of that story Moira told about being up in the U.P. with her BB gun boyfriend and his beagle and those raccoons . . . and I still shiver every single time I do.

  I told you that Lacroix and Elle have parked out in our driveway, haven’t I? Well, they have. A friend in Ohio lent them some sort of camper. (Not a Winnebago. Lacroix corrected me—the word seemed to offend some Euro-sensibility of his.) Its wheel wells are trimmed in rusty lace and the weather has left oddly evocative patterns in the aluminum siding, but it has a functional bathroom and a dinged-up cooking range. Elle has hung out a clothesline (upon which she unabashedly hangs her exotic unmentionables) and arranged around the steps pots full of mysterious herbs that I can’t for the life of me identify. (Some sort of African hallucinogenic? Some sort of homeopathic aphrodisiac?) It looks like a Space Age homestead.

  The point is, the thing takes up pretty much the entire driveway. I couldn’t even squeeze the trash cans past it. I had to maneuver them into the grass, and that’s what I was doing when I heard a noise. All the lights were off in the trailer, so it took me a second to realize where it was coming from. It was the sound of Elle laughing from inside, a giddy, delighted sound that crackled subtly in the quiet air, like lightning does when it’s forming, when it’s still electrons racing from the clouds to the clods, the charges rushing to meet each other in the air before the entire sky lights up. As soon as I heard it, I knew I should go, should pick up my trash cans and get the hell out of there. It’s a sin to eavesdrop on others. It’s like theft, like taking away something that isn’t yours to take. I have always believed that, Arthur. Even if I laughed when you used to slow down exaggeratedly outside other people’s closed office doors or slide that shot glass along your wall with your ear pressed against it. I never believed anything that you claimed to hear; I honestly believed you were making it up. Tell me that’s true. Think what they were saying about us.

  Still. I couldn’t go. It was like something was holding me there by the scruff of my neck, pinning me to the grass against my will. All I could do was stand there, my bare feet soaking with dew, my palms slick against the trash can handles, riveted, and listen to them in their passionate fervor. When it’s not you, in the throes, you can hear how it sounds differently outside the storm, that it sounds like sobbing, and a little like grief. My heart was pounding like a sledgehammer in my chest. I felt like someone dying of thirst, Arthur—listening to rain in the distance.

  So there it is, my most shameful confession yet. You know that this is something that I wouldn’t tell anyone, don’t you? There has got to be a way of breaking myself of this habit.

  But in the meantime, it’s morning here, and there are stale cornflakes and toast to burn.

  Yours,

  Jess

  From: Jessica Frobisher

  Sent: Tuesday, July 8, 2014 2:07 am

  To: Arthur Danielson

  Cc:

  Bcc:

  Subject: rooftop encounters

  Arthur,

  So I’d managed to avoid Lacroix for a solid four days. My streak was broken yesterday when I came home at lunch, thinking no one would be here, only to find our filmmaker friend wandering around on the roof.

  The first thing I spotted when I pulled in the driveway was Lacroix’s van. The second was the ladder propped against the side of the porch. That ladder came with the house; it’s practically an antique. I think the model stopped being sold years ago—maybe because of the locking mechanism, which is temperamental, or maybe because some genius in the marketing/design department decided to call it the Lightning Rod, and have orange and yellow zigzags painted down the sides. The thing is a fifteen-foot telescoping aluminum death trap. I don’t allow anyone to set foot on it, except me, because I’m the only one who’s fully mastered its quirks.

  You can guess, then, why seeing it there made me . . . unhappy. What I wanted to do was walk straight into the house and slam the door behind me. But I didn’t. There’s some infernal maternal instinct that kicks in when you have children, Arthur—no one warns you about this—that makes it hard to turn around and walk away, that compels you to save nitwits from themselves.

  Sighing heavily, I got out of the car and slogged across the lawn. I grabbed the ladder and rattled it. “Theo!” I yelled. “Theo, I know you’re up there.”

  Silence.

  There was nothing to do but go up after him. I grabbed the fourth step of the ladder and jerked it up and down, racking the thing sort of like a shotgun, until I heard a telltale click. Hearing it confirmed what I’d thought: he’d climbed the whole way up with the latch undone, nothing but dumb luck keeping him in the air.

  He’d also pitched the ladder at a near vertical, considerately, to avoid crushing my rosebushes, but I wasn’t afraid. Thanks to all that tree-climbing as a kid, I’m not afraid of heights. It’s one way I’m fearless that Liam’s not, which is why I clean the gutters every fall, while Liam—if he’s around—sticks firmly to the ground and rakes the leaves. “Stop that, Jess,” he says when I moonwalk in my sneakers all the way to the edge, just far enough that my heels are hanging over the edge, nothing but two stories of windy, empty air under them. “I’m not kidding. Stop it right now.” It’s a stupid stunt, yes, but it’s a long way from what he calls it: “cheating death.” A funny accusation for a man who once strapped himself into a seat perched on half a ton of rocket fuel and then let someone else ignite it. Such a thing to have done—I knew it even then. Such a reckless extravagance—setting all your luck on fire, as though you have an infinite supply to burn through—that it’s amazing it took so long for this to end in tragedy. It’s this blasphemous thought that hits me with such force that there are times when it stops me in my tracks.

  When I got to the top, I had to wander around for a minute before I spotted Lacroix. (I’m a little in love with the geography of our roof, with its little mossy peaks and valleys and its smoldering vents, but visibility is poor up there.) He was standing on the gable above our master bedroom window with his camcorder out, and he was filming the beautiful leafy altitude, the sun going in and out of the clouds.

  Theo, I was about to say, but then I stopped. I said it quietly, Arthur, because there was a kind of uncanny intensity to his demeanor that made me reluctant to break it. When I took a step closer, I could hear him talking to himself in an odd froggy voice. It seemed to be this peculiar narrative that went something like this: Space as seen from the roof of rocket scientist Liam Callahan. Tantalizing. Mysterious. Most of us are content to admire this view from here. For some though, this is a view synonymous with desire. What if one could escape our planet’s clutches, catch a glimpse of the universe? What if one could come back with a tale of what you had witnessed, a story that the rest of billions of stranded earthbound could only imagine and envy? The CEO of Spaceco perhaps put it best. “It’s seeing Earth like God,” he said. This is the dream that he and the men of Spaceco are selling.

  I waited to see if he would continue, and when he didn’t, I cleared my throat. Carefully. Because he was awfully close to the edge, Arthur, and front-loaded with
that heavy camera. How he hauled it up the ladder, all by himself, I haven’t the faintest idea. I said, “For a price.”

  “Ah, Jessica.” I could tell by the way he said it that he’d known I was there the whole time. Still holding the camera, he turned around, step by step, until he was facing me. “Come here. I want to show you something.”

  “Theo,” I said. “You can’t be up here. ”

  “And yet here you are.” He was still holding out his hand, beckoning me closer, while he fiddled with a tiny foldout screen on the side of his camera. “The intrepid botanista.” He was clearly not listening to me. “Come, come, come.”

  “No.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Not until you step back from the edge,” I said. “We’ve had an unlucky streak lately, remember? We don’t want to push it. We can’t afford to lose anyone else. Think how it would look.”

  It was the first time either one of us had alluded to the accident. Liam and I, Arthur, are under strict instructions from the Spaceco legal department not to discuss this matter with Lacroix. “Not on the pain of death” was the phrase Liam used, employing a rare bit of hyperbole.

  “I would think it looked very clumsy of me.” He sat down, hoisted the camera up on his knees, and patted the shingles next to him. “Sit. Don’t sigh, Jessica. It’s very unbecoming.”