The Infinite Tides

by Christian Kiefer

  The feeling of Quinn was fading now, the fear and terror of loss drifting out and away from him as Luda spoke, as if the story, someone else’s story, was enough to press that secret gravity away from him.

  “When Ukraine is independent we must leave. My father was good man and people like him and so we stay in Pechersk for years but then he has the cancer and is buried. Then not very good anymore.”

  “They kicked them out to street,” Peter said with obvious disgust.

  “Not so bad as that.” She looked up at Keith, their eyes locking together.

  “Bah.” Peter waved his hands in the air.

  “Where did you go?” Keith said.

  “To university,” Luda said. “For job, not for student.”

  “Is that where you met Peter?”

  “Yes, that is where I met Peter.” She did not break the eye contact, instead continuing to stare at Keith, her complete attention focused on him. “He is very different from those people I knew before.”

  “I was poor,” Peter said.

  And now Luda did look at her husband and when she spoke her tone was quiet and lilting, like a beautiful, sad bird: “Yes, but not like poor. Not … how do you say … not stupid.”

  Peter did not say anything, instead shaking his head, his eyes half closed in thought.

  “He is very smart man,” Luda said.

  Keith nodded. “I know.”

  “Bah,” Peter said again. “This talk is embarrassing to me. We talk more about job so I know what to do tomorrow for interview.”

  Keith looked over at him, and at Luda.

  “We were married quickly,” she said as he met her eyes once again.

  “Quickly?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Quickly.”

  “Ah,” Peter said. “You embarrass me now even more.” A hush fell and Keith sat and wondered what she meant and then Peter said, “You do not understand. She was to have baby Marko.”

  “Oh,” Keith said. Nothing more. He glanced at Luda and her eyes were cast to the table again.

  “It was very fast wedding,” she said. “My mother was very embarrassing. There was no money left then.”

  “Yes, I know I dragged you down with me,” Peter said.

  “Petruso!” she said abruptly. Her voice was sharp and Peter actually cringed when she said his name. She cast out a quick sentence in Ukrainian with obvious anger and Peter was immediately silent.

  The table awkward and quiet. Then Peter lifted his wineglass ostentatiously and said, “I apologize to my wife and to my guest, Astronaut Keith Corcoran. She is correct. I should not speak these things.” He nodded and continued to hold his glass and Keith lifted his as well. “To our American friend, who is great man and famous astronaut.”

  “To new friends,” Keith said.

  Luda had lifted her own wineglass and she smiled at Keith’s words, her irritation apparently over.

  They continued eating. Peter asked questions about Dreyfuss and about Tom Chen and Keith answered as best he could, offering detail when it was possible to do so. Luda periodically cautioned her husband on his aggressive questioning but Keith did not mind, perhaps an effect of the wine or simply of the good spirits the dinner had put him in.

  “This Mr. Tom Chen is good man, maybe?” Peter said.

  “I don’t know him well, but I think so.”

  “It will be fair,” Luda said. It might have been a question.

  “Yes. Don’t forget, though, that it’s still very competitive. I can’t say that enough.”

  Peter waved his hands in the air, a gesture that had become familiar. “Yes, yes,” he said.

  “OK, but I’m just telling you, even with the interview you still might not get the job.”

  “I know,” Peter said. “Difficult to get job.”

  There was a long silence. Luda began clearing the plates and then Peter rose and spoke in Ukrainian and Luda sat again and Peter took over the task. A moment later Keith moved to help and Peter told him to sit and continued to clear the table.

  “Maybe you tell us story about being famous astronaut?” Luda said at last.

  “I’m not too good at that.”

  “I would like to hear.”

  Keith thought for a moment. “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “There’s a lot.”

  “Every day you must be pinching yourself,” Luda said.

  “What?”

  “She means you are excited,” Peter said. He had returned to the table with a teapot and cups and filled each of them as Luda continued to speak.

  “No, not excited,” she said, paused, and then said something to Peter that Keith could not understand and Peter answered her, nodding. Then she said, “Knowing you are there in space. Like you are finally there.”

  “Yeah, there was that. Especially in the beginning.”

  “You must have been feeling great then.”

  “Yes. I can’t even describe it. Just … amazing.”

  “Like in a dream maybe.”

  “Yes, like in a dream. Better than a dream.”

  “You were waiting for that day.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much waiting?”

  “How much? My whole life.” He did not think before answering, his response automatic, and he almost immediately felt awkward about his words, even though he knew it to be true.

  “Waiting to be astronaut a long time, then.”

  “As long as I can remember.”

  “For adventure maybe?”

  “Not really,” he said. “That might have been part of it but really it was … it’s hard to explain. I wanted to do something real and useful. But also … I don’t know … I wanted to see it, I guess.”

  “See what you made?”

  “Yes, see it out there in space. And I wanted to be there to see it.” He paused a moment and then added, “I guess that doesn’t really make much sense.”

  “Yes, it makes sense,” Luda said simply. “Very beautiful.”

  “So beautiful. Unbelievable.”

  “Like seeing God.”

  He did not know how to respond to this and so he merely smiled and nodded.

  “Now we have dessert,” Peter said. He was carrying something from the kitchen. A cheesecake of some kind.

  “I don’t know how much more good food I can take,” Keith said.

  Peter brought plates and forks and a knife and cut the cheesecake into slices and they ate and sipped at their tea for a time and when Luda’s voice came from the opposite side of the table it was quiet: “Forgive,” she said. “You must want to be in space again?”

  “Oh, every day.”

  “Then you go back to astronaut soon?”

  “It’s complicated,” Keith said.

  “Complicated?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How complicated?”

  Then Peter: “This is not something our guest wants to speak of, I think.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Keith said. “Really. It’s just that it’s …” He paused and tried to find a better word but then said, again, “complicated.” Luda did not respond and after a moment he said: “I got sick on the mission.”

  “Sick? How sick?”

  “I started getting headaches. Really bad headaches.”

  “Now you are better?”

  “Not really.”

  “What happens then for astronaut work?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I can be an astronaut anymore.”

  “Because of headaches.”

  “Yes.”

  It was quiet then and he took a bite of the cheesecake. They all did. He had never said such a thing, had hardly even thought it through, but it was the truth.

  “More?” Peter said after a time.

  “God, no,” he said, smiling. “I’m going to explode.”

  “Maybe half piece only then.”

  “No, I can’t. Thank you, but I can’t.”

  “OK,” Peter said.

  After a moment Lud
a said, “I ask you about your daughter?”

  Keith looked at her and nodded reluctantly.

  “Petruso told me that you are not home when she goes to God?”

  “I was still on the space station.”

  Peter said something to her in Ukrainian and she answered him. “I tell her you maybe do not want to talk about this,” Peter said.

  “It’s fine,” Keith said. “Really.” But he did not know if it was.

  “I apologize,” Luda said.

  “No, it’s fine.”

  A moment of silence there in the dining room. Then Luda said, “If on space station then maybe you do not see funeral?”

  “No, I didn’t see it. But they made a film of it for me. On DVD. So I watched that when I was back in Houston.”

  “Because you are on space station for days?”

  “Months.”

  “Months? How many these months?”

  “Nearly three.”

  “After your daughter: three months?”

  “Yes.”

  “In space?”

  “Yes, in space.”

  It was quiet again and then she covered her face in her hands and Keith did not understand what she was doing at first but then her shoulders rocked and she began sobbing, the sound of it harsh and violent. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, I’m sorry.” He did not know what he was apologizing for, but he said it anyway.

  “Shhh,” Peter said. He stroked her back softly and whispered to her in Ukrainian.

  After a few moments she quieted and raised a cloth napkin to her face and eyes and dried them. Keith sat uncomfortably, wondering if he should leave, if every meeting between the three of them would end with him wondering if he should leave.

  “I am sorry,” she said, her eyes smeared with black mascara like the eyes of a raccoon. “It is very sad to hear.”

  He stared at her in a kind of wonderment: her gaze dark, liquid, the outpouring of grief so sudden and unexpected that Keith found it incomprehensible. “It’s OK,” he said. “I’m fine. Really.” He knew this was not true, not anymore, but what more could he say?

  “No,” she said. “No, no, no, no.” Her voice fading out. A whisper.

  The room descended into a soft, trembling quiet and held that way for so long that Keith again wondered if he should leave.

  “It is very sad to hear this,” Luda said at last, wiping at her running mascara with her napkin.

  Keith nodded but did not answer.

  “He is strong man,” Peter said.

  “No man is strong for this.” Her eyes were trembling with tears and Keith could see that she struggled to regain her composure.

  “I’m fine,” he said

  “Yes, yes, you are fine,” Luda said. “Everyone is fine. You are strong man, like Peter says.” She sounded bitter now, perhaps even angry, and Keith waited for whatever storm had descended upon the table to pass.

  Peter said something to her in Ukrainian and Luda answered him with apparent irritation and after a moment Keith said, “So I think it’s time for me to head home.”

  “No, you stay please,” Luda said. Peter started to speak but she put a hand on his arm and he fell silent. “I am sorry for this making you uncomfortable.”

  “It’s OK,” Keith said, “but it’s late.”

  Peter said something in Ukrainian again and this time Luda did not answer him. She continued to stare at Keith, fixing him with her dark eyes as if to hold him there. He knew that she did not believe him when he claimed that he was managing, that he was fine, but there was no other answer he was capable of giving for even though he knew that he was crumbling, there still remained no other answer he could fathom.

  Eighteen

  “Well, it’s substantial.”

  Keith stood with his hands on his hips. “How substantial?”

  “We won’t quite know that until we really get in there but I can see where the little buggers have chewed up some of the support here. Usually when we see this kind of thing the damage goes down into the foundation supports. That’s where it can really get pricey.”

  “Christ.”

  “Yes, indeed,” the contractor said. “Sometimes it doesn’t happen that way. I mean I’ve seen it where we pull off the drywall expecting to find a hell-on-earth scenario and it’s just a little track like the termites got bored and went away to eat someone else’s house. So we bang out a few boards and knock it back together and get the inspectors back out to make sure it’s done right and presto we’re done and out.”

  “How much work do you have to do just to figure out how much work you have to do?”

  “That’s a good question,” the contractor said. “We’ll need to pull all the drywall off this wall for sure to start with. Then we can try to see if there’s anything else we need to follow. We’ll probably need to pull some off the outside too and maybe on the inside of this wall where it comes up against the house. What’s behind this wall?”

  “The kitchen.”

  “Yeah, that’s a problem. There’s cabinetry and appliances so you might not even know they’re munching away in there. You ever find sawdust in your cabinets? Like in a plate or a pot or pan or anything?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, that might be a good sign. Or it might not. Termites are crafty and they’re dumb at the same time. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing except eating. Sometimes they come right through the wall like they done here. Sometimes you don’t never see them until you’re leaning against something and it gives way and you fall right through it. Hell, I’ve even seen a whole big colony of them fall through the ceiling in a huge ball of sawdust and termite shit. Fell through right onto the dining room table of a house. All those little pincers everywhere. Scared the hell out of the people who lived there. Little kids probably still have nightmares about it.”

  “I’m sure they do.”

  They had been in the blazing heat of the garage for the better part of an hour while the contractor and his assistant cut chunks of dry-wall and insulation and probed the interior structure with flashlights. He had asked Keith to kneel on the concrete floor and peer into the dark recesses of his own empty house and Keith had done so as the contractor pointed out the channels in the framing where the termites had burrowed through the wood. At one point the contractor said, “Ah, shit. Shit. Well, shit, shit,” and then shone his flashlight farther into the wall space. “See ’em?” he said, and Keith looked. “Mouse turds,” the contractor said. “You’ve got yourself a regular pest infestation.”

  “Fantastic,” Keith said

  “Maybe for the pest control people, but probably not so much for you,” the contractor said.

  Through the open garage door, Keith watched Jennifer as she moved across his field of vision. She was dressed once again in her gym clothes and Keith wondered at the fact that he had experienced that body at all, the memory of it like some weird and distant dream he could hardly recall. She glanced in his direction but made no acknowledgment of him whatsoever and a moment later disappeared inside her house.

  The contractor and his assistant moved through the house methodically. Keith did not understand how they managed to know where to look but when the contractor stopped near an interior wall and told him it was possible or even probable that the termites would have chewed the framing beyond, Keith insisted that they cut a hole to look. His assistant brought a saw and plugged it in and a moment later there was a two-foot aperture in the wall.

  The contractor whistled through his teeth. “You have got yourself an infestation,” he said. “Look here.”

  Keith did so and again saw the thin drilled lines that indicated termites. “Shit,” he said.

  “Yep. That’s a good word to use now.”

  At Keith’s insistence, the contractor cut three more holes in the walls of the downstairs and two of the three revealed additional damage. There was a secret disaster occurring just beyond the plaster and drywall, a disaster that Keith had known nothing about, h
ad not even suspected, the engineering of the house itself weakened, the equations shifting in value and importance until he was left with a calculus of weakness and financial ruin that was so painful that it actually made him laugh.

  “Doesn’t seem so funny to me,” the contractor said.

  “Oh, it’s not,” Keith said, still chuckling. “It’s definitely not funny.”

  “Listen, I’m going to let the pest inspectors cover the rest of it. They’re probably gonna want to tent the whole house. Pump the whole thing full of poison. Kill every damn thing in here. Probably ought to have that done first and then we’ll talk about what to do about the termites. Otherwise, I’m just cutting a bunch of holes in your house for no good reason.”

  “What about the mouse?”

  “What about it?”

  “The mouse probably did some damage too?”

  “Hell, you’ve got bigger problems than that.”

  Indeed.

  “This place isn’t in escrow or anything, is it?”

  “It is, actually,” Keith said. “I mean it was before this. I don’t know what the status is now.”

  “Damn, that Sally Erler is selling houses even in this economy? She’s a spitfire. Anyway, if that’s the case you’re gonna want the pest company to get it tented up quick, like in the next week or two. Once that’s done we can get working. Sally can crack the whip some but the stuff I’m gonna have to do to get it to pass code is still gonna take a while.”

  The contractor departed soon thereafter and Keith was left in a home cut with holes. The slash in the wall of the garage was ten feet long, as if some gargantuan termite had torn into that same space with wild, insatiable hunger, the contractor doing more visible damage than the termites ever had and so it would go. At least the contractor had moved on to chew on some other house. He wished he could say the same about the termites. Maybe they could be lured to Jennifer’s house across the street. Some Pied Piper of termites. But he thought it unlikely.

  So the house was secretly falling apart all around him. How he longed to be in orbit once more, to feel that sense of weightlessness, as if the dense matter of his body had become a gas, a vapor, the ether itself. But there was no return. And as if to underscore this simple fact, he looked up to find Jennifer walking across the street toward him. She was not in her workout clothes this time, instead in jeans and a tight white T-shirt, her hair pulled into a rough ponytail. He wondered if he should retreat into the house but then continued to stand there, framed by the open door of the empty garage. “Hey,” he said.