“OK.” I put down the sponge and wiped my hands on my shirttails. “I’m listening.”
“I thought you might come with us.”
“No.” I picked the sponge back up. “Come on, Li. That’s not going to happen. Who’s going to watch the kids? We’ve completely tapped out Paula. There’s no way I can—”
“Jess, for the love of God,” Liam said. “Will you let me finish?”
With great effort I shut my mouth.
“Lacroix wants you to go. Do you understand what I mean by that?”
I didn’t, actually, so I just stood there, silently looking at him.
“He wants you to go up with him and Elle on the spaceflight. He wants you to be the third person.”
I looked down at the dripping sponge. I was startled to find myself still holding it. “That’s what he said?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.” I leaned down and swirled my sponge through the bucket at my feet, then held out my hand. “OK. Pay up.”
Liam frowned. I’d managed, for at least a second, to make him confused instead of annoyed. “Pay what?”
“I told you he was crazy, didn’t I? You didn’t believe me.” I edged forward, feeling for the next stray clump of potting soil with my sneakers, a mess I could no longer see but knew was there. The day before I’d been ripping a bag of the stuff open, only to discover as it came pouring out that it was infested with hookworms—and in a moment of panic, I’d flung it. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him I would ask you.” Liam reached out and gingerly prodded the light-fixture wires where they were sticking out, their bare ends wound up in duct tape.
For a second there was nothing but the sound of the crickets chirping while I stared incredulously at him. I remember one of my first thoughts was, Arthur is not going to believe this. Part of my mind was already racing away from the moment, thinking how I would describe it to you: the insect din, the glittery bracelet from Corinne that’s been chafing my wrist for days, a better synonym for the word dumbfounded. All this in a millisecond, a few synaptic firings, before I came back to my senses and realized how fraught, how fucking fraught, all the explaining would actually be.
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “It doesn’t even make any sense.” I was stammering, The questions were so obvious that they were difficult to even form. “Why me?”
“I know,” Liam said. “I asked that question too.” He was still flicking away at the loose wire, harder now, and using his Serious Engineer voice, the one he uses professionally with strangers. It was so perfectly modulated that it sounded almost like he’d been practicing, and I thought suddenly that maybe he had—in the car on the way home, perhaps, or in front of the mirror earlier that morning, while he was stripping the lather off his jawline in indignant, jugular-endangering strokes. Or maybe while he was running home to come talk to me, while he was slogging his way up the last torturous hill, stewing about how he would have to approach me, with his hat literally in his hands.
“I offered to go. He doesn’t want me. He doesn’t want Tristan, or Jeff, who all but begged on his hands and knees. He says he wants someone who doesn’t know the ins and outs of how it all works. An outsider. Someone to whom the experience is new and revelatory.” His imitation of Lacroix’s accent was passable. “He vetoed all the candidates we suggested. You, on the other hand”—he smiled faintly—“he seems to have taken quite a shine to.”
“Trust me, the shine is unrequited,” I said, although I wasn’t sure if that was strictly true. I remembered Lacroix the other day, the rain in his hair, filming that lightning so intently, like his life depended on it.
“I know,” Liam said. He gave the wires another flick. “Anyway. You don’t have to answer right now. You can think about it.”
“I don’t need to,” I said. “The answer is no.”
“Jess,” he said.
“No,” I said. “No.” I squeezed my eyes closed. I know you think I’m afraid, Arthur, deep down, that I just won’t admit it. But it wasn’t that. I’m not afraid of dying in an exploding spaceship. I wasn’t afraid of being drawn into Lacroix’s clutches either—although maybe I should be. I was thinking I didn’t want to be a party to something unsavory, to one more thing I’ll regret, one more thing that will wake me up at three in the morning with pangs of doubt, something that feels like a heart problem gone undiagnosed. I know you know what I’m talking about.
“Jess,” said Liam. “Forget Lacroix. We need this to work. We have a lawsuit pending, remember? There’s the house, and—”
“We talked about this.” I took the sponge and began wringing it out as hard as I could. “You agreed we might be able to manage—”
“Fine. Then do it as a favor,” Liam said. “I’m asking you for a favor. For me. You know that you owe me. Don’t pretend that you don’t.”
The light from Jack’s room, just above our heads, flicked once and went out, and then we couldn’t see each other at all.
“You should just spit it out,” I said. I know what you think, but sometimes there really is no choice, Arthur.
I heard him laugh a little in the dark. “Where to begin? That you were sleeping with someone else? That you made so little effort to hide it?”
The smell of the gardenias in the wind was suffocating.
“You know, in the meeting yesterday, when Lacroix was making the case for you, he kept talking about your je ne se quoi,” Liam said. “He was going on about what an expressive face you have. No one else in that room gave a shit, of course, because Lacroix’s artistic aesthetic is the last thing anyone has time to worry about. Except for me. I was sitting there thinking, Damn right. You can read it like a book.”
There was a long pause while we listened to the sponge in my hand dripping onto the stones, and I stared at the stars trapped in the bucket next to me. I seem to remember that there were four of them.
“Like I said, you can sleep on it,” Liam said. “I would.” A second later, I could see his shoes flashing away into the dark.
There you have it.
Jess
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2014 2:23 pm
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: Re: suicide missions: pros and cons
Yes, well. Ask and ye shall receive.
Arthur, I think it’s too bad fate led you to me instead of Paula. (For many, many reasons, actually.) You and my sister have a lot more in common than I originally realized—right down to the exact same turns of phrase. At least Paula doesn’t ask me if I am OUT OF MY FUCKING MIND in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS followed by a string of !!!!s and ???s. (One of each would have been perfectly sufficient.) I think her professional training prohibits her from asking that question.
When I called her up to see if she might, hypothetically, be able to come back to Michigan to watch Jack and Corinne for a few days in August, so that I could go get shot up into space, she paused for a long moment, and then said, in the way only Paula can: “This isn’t some sort of deeply sublimated death wish, is it, Jess? You would tell me if it was, right?”
“You know, people keep asking me that,” I said.
“Well?” she said.
“The contractor came back and upgraded all the switches in the new shuttle at no charge, you know,” I said. “They wouldn’t let Lacroix film it. You should have seen him. He was storming around the house in high dudgeon, and Elle was trying to console him. It was all in French, but I think she was saying ‘Fuck them. Fuck those American pieces of shit,’” I said.
“That’s not what she was saying,” Paula said.
“How do you know?” I said. “You haven’t seen this woman. She looks decorative, but peel away all that pretty and there’s nothing underneath but these steely teeth. You get the feeling that if it was you and her stranded together in a lifeboat, and only one piece of tenderloin steak
—”
“Why is there steak in the lifeboat?” Paula said. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It’s like flying right after a plane crash,” I said. “Or after some asshole tries to blow up a 747 with a bomb in his diaper. You know how it’s ten times as safe because everyone is double- and triple-checking everything?”
“Oh,” said Paula. “Well, in that case.” I could picture her, standing in the pristine kitchen of her condo, with its alphabetical spice rack, winding the hem of her T-shirt around her nonphone hand. It’s a gesture of exasperation that we share. I only noticed this the last time she was here. You’re an only child, Arthur, so you probably don’t understand how disorienting it is to see your expressions play across someone else’s face or hear your own inflection coming out of someone else’s mouth. For a few seconds you know exactly what you look like to everyone else in the world.
“For God’s sake, Jess,” she said. “You’re his wife. The world must be full of nutjobs who would take your place in a heartbeat. Tell him no. Tell him to find someone else.”
For a moment, Arthur, I considered coming clean. I leaned over and buried my face in the mason jar stuffed full of flowers on the table. In spite of all the rain we’ve been getting, everything in the greenhouse area has been flourishing in the way only the wicked is supposed to. There’s been such an abundance that I’ve been going out almost every other day to hack things back. I gave away some of the surplus orchids and basil to Lacroix a few days after he drove me to the ER. I piled them up in one of our old Easter baskets and left them out on the step of his trailer. The offering was a bizarre expression of gratitude and resentment—one part “Thanks for your help” and one part “Fuck you.” I’m pretty sure this is something Paula would have understood. She once told me that there’s nothing we’re not of two minds about if we dig down deep enough. Ambivalence is the bedrock of human existence, she said. Face it.
But then I chickened out. “I can’t,” I said.
The point of this anecdote is . . .
OK, I forgot what the point was. But there’s this: Has it occurred to you, Arthur, that I might actually want to go?
j
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2014 9:59 pm
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: Re: facing it
It absolutely is a test. And, yes, I’m going to do my damnedest not to fail.
But that’s not what I was asking. I was just asking you to consider the possibility. It’s a free $250,000 ticket, Arthur. To see space. Every time I think about it, my stomach drops, which is about once every ten minutes. I haven’t felt like that since—well, never mind. But I’ve gone back to swigging Pepto.
I’ll try to take some pictures. Seriously, Arthur. They’ll be absolutely stunning.
Jess
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Thursday, July, 31 2014 6:52 am
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: Funny thing happened on the way to the office
Arthur,
I have a story for you.
It opens on a dull note: Me in the Nat Sci building. I’m knocking on Thom’s office door.
It continues with Thom inviting me in. Me getting some paperwork signed. Thom and I make small talk. It goes something like this: Pregnant-with-twins Olivia is doing great. Jack is doing great. Corinne is doing great. (This is still boring, I know, but bear with me.) We do not discuss Liam. Liam, obviously, is not doing great. Thom knows this. I know this. Neither one of us lies that well; we have this in common. We don’t want to even try.
I turn to leave. I make it all the way to the door, and Thom clears his throat. (And here’s where things get interesting. Are you ready?)
“Ah, Jess,” Thom says.
I am still holding on to the doorknob. I turn around. What Thom says next is this:
“Sorry to hear about Arthur.”
“Excuse me?” I say. My first thought is that there has been some sort of accident, that you, Arthur, have died, and no one has told me. The reason I say “Excuse me” is not because I have a hearing problem. It’s because all the blood has just rushed up to my head, and I need that extra second before I let go of the door and try to make it to the chair. I really and truly am afraid to move. I am afraid I might collapse on the way.
“About his taking the job at Duke,” Thom says. “I know you two were close.” He is watching me with those mild blue eyes of his, and pretending not to notice a thing, and I realize in a sudden and sad and blindingly obvious way that he knows what he knows. There isn’t an ounce of malice in his voice. There is just a regretful sympathy that might, in another life, have disarmed me. The me in this story can’t be disarmed, though, because I am still in something like shock. This is a good thing. It prevents me from saying something unwise, something that I will later remember against my will, and be forced to squirm at for years to come.
Thom continues valiantly talking, continues valiantly pretending. “I tried to bribe him to stay,” he says. “I offered him all the meager filthy lucre I had on hand, but I got the impression he was eager to shake the Ann Arbor dust off his feet.” He is fiddling apologetically with some paper clips on his desk, like he’s untangling them, although you and I both know, Arthur, that those paper clips have been snarled together for years, and they are never fucking coming apart. Thom says, “He was playing hardball. You know how a person bargains sometimes in that way that tells you that he doesn’t really want his mind changed?”
I don’t remember how I respond. There is a very loud ringing in my ears, and I’m not sure that whatever I say next makes any sense. Maybe it’s “Why wouldn’t he?” Maybe it’s “Who would?” The power of movement has returned. More than anything I want to get back to the safety of my office. When I finally escape I pass Moira in the hall, and she says, “God, Jess, take it easy.” It occurs to me—and not for the first time—that in her loud, stupid way Moira is the most astute person in this entire department of scientists, and what does that say about us?
That is the story.
So tell me now, Arthur: what do you think?
Jess
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Saturday, August 2, 2014 1:03 pm
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: Re: explanations
It’s not the same thing, and you know it. The whole spaceflight will take 2.5 hours from start to finish, and then I. Am. Coming. Back.
When were you planning on telling me? Were you going to wait until a week before the semester started, and then send me an e-mail: “Oh, by the way, I’ve moved to North Carolina, so good-bye forever. P.S. Have a nice life”?
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Sunday, August 3, 2014 9:09 am
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: Re: re: explanations
Point taken. You don’t owe me anything. I’ve only been your best friend for six years. Have a great time in North Carolina.
Jess
P.S. Have a nice life
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Sunday, August 3, 2014 10:09 pm
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: Re: amends
Yes. T minus 14 days. I haven’t started packing yet. There’s actually not that much to take. Mostly just long underwear for under the space suit. A doctor’s note, declaring me to be physically fit—and not pregnant. Sunscreen. That’s about it.
When are you headed down to North Carolina?
From: Jessica Frob
isher
Sent: Monday, August 4, 2014 10:24 pm
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: treehouses
Arthur, please. I get it. You were just being honest. There’s no need to say anything else, so please do me a favor and don’t. I’ve just been taking some time to resign myself, that’s all. Resignation is something I’ve never been very good at. I should be grateful to you for giving me the chance to practice.
Gripe of the day: Lacroix has switched from calling me “Jessica” in his sexy-making accent to referring to me as “fellow astronaut.” He’s been trying to get some more shots of me on the home planet doing mundane Earthling things, so this morning he and Elle tagged along with me and Jack and Corinne on our trip to the park. We’re all sick of the one near our house (which has a hideous postmodernist jungle gym that Corinne’s afraid of), so we went to this place on South Wagner Road. It’s where I used to take Harley before he died. It was the best off-leash pooch park you’ve ever seen. Most of the dogs would congregate in the middle of the field next to the parking lot, in a yappy, swirling mass, but Har-har and I would steer clear of them. We’d head down into a drainage ditch and tack around the edge of the lot until we reached the safety of the woods on the west side. The two of us had an understanding. Harley was as eager to avoid the exuberant hip-checking and humping of his fellow canines as I was to avoid small talk with their latte-clutching owners. Liam was right about Har. He was one ornery little muttski. But there are moments when, out of nowhere, I’m still jolted by how much I miss him. I’ll be standing at the stove, say, frying up a batch of bacon, or straightening up Jack’s boots in the corner where the ratty corduroy dog bed used to be and has not been for years, and I’ll feel it—a sudden stab that makes me say out loud, “Holy shit,” or some other non sequitur that’s just as profane.
God is an Astronaut Page 19
