God is an Astronaut (34 page)

But I don’t want to talk about them right now. The truth is, I’m a little distracted by all the epiphanies I’m having. They’re keeping me up at night. I’m told that these symptoms—mania, sleeplessness—are common aftereffects for people who go up. I’m told they don’t last.

As for your question . . . you know as well as I do that it’s a sore subject. Maybe we should just leave it lie?

Your prudent, sleepless

Jess

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 3:18 pm

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: Re: seriously now

Danielson, I seriously don’t
have
to tell you anything. If you’re dying to know how it all went down, then maybe you’ll just have to bite the bullet and shell out $10 to go see the movie in a theater when it comes out. What with everything that’s happened, Lacroix’s gotten such good publicity that the film may make a run in the mainstream theaters, not just the artsy-fartsy ones like State Street. But I sure as hell hope not.

Besides, I signed so many nondisclosure agreements that I’m no longer sure who I’m allowed to tell what. I don’t need a lawyer to tell me that all these missives I have been sending you are a huge liability. Actually, I knew that all along. E-mail isn’t secure, as my newly estranged husband used to remind me. Who knows who could be reading this?

How about if I told you the expurgated version I told Jack and Corinne? It went like this: My trip out into space was an exciting adventure. Our planet is a lot smaller than you would think. And more staggeringly beautiful than you can possibly imagine, but in a terrible sort of way.

There’s the longer, trickier unabridged version that I’ll need to tell them eventually, of course. I’ve spent a few of my sleepless nights trying to think about what I’ll say, someday in the future, when they have sins and failures of their own, and they have a better grip on the terminology, and a better chance of understanding.

But I have some time, I guess, to practice.

Re the northern lights: heartbreaking in a good way or just heartbreaking?

Jess

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 3:20 pm

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: p.s.

It looks like I’m getting your 265 section, so thanks a lot.

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2014 11:43 pm

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: practice run

Yes, you read that right.

I wasn’t being coy. We haven’t even figured out what we’re telling Jack and Corinne about the separation.

As for my trip . . . it’s just hard to describe. That’s all. My first day back on campus, I ran into Moira on the steps of the Hatcher. I was coming back from your office with an armful of your indefinitely checked-out library books. Your days of abusing your faculty borrowing privileges are over, I’m afraid. And Krasinski’s taking your office. The decision was made the day before I got back, so I couldn’t call dibs even if I wanted to. If I weren’t trying to cut back on my daily dose of paranoia, I would say that this was a strategic move—to spare everyone the unseemliness of my name being brought up so close to yours. But perhaps not.

The first thing Moira said to me was, “You survived.” She laughed after she said it to make it a joke, although I swear she sounded a little disappointed.

The second thing she said was, “How was it?”

I smiled and gave her the most unsatisfying reply I possibly could. “It was fine,” I said. There was nothing else to do after that except for us each to go our separate ways. Her to the lab. Me to drop off your books, to divest my life of the last few traces of you.

Are you ready, Arthur? The real answer goes something like this:

Everything was a little crazy when we arrived at the launch site. Even though Spaceco was doing their damnedest to keep the launch “low-profile,” it was clear that someone had “accidentally” leaked the time of the launch, and the entire dirt track was covered with TV vans and cars, which meant Jed didn’t have a chance to show off his action-hero driving skills again. All he could do was creep along like everyone else, one hand on the horn. Every now and then he had to veer off the road, and we all had to reach out and put our hands on the windows to brace ourselves. Elle was sitting in the front seat, filming the general chaos, while Lacroix sat in the back, zooming in and out on Liam and me. He was hoping to capture, I imagined, some final bit of earthly domestic drama, maybe the moment where I broke down and sobbed, and owned up at last.

If that’s what he was hoping for, he was in for a disappointment. But the tension in the car was cranked up so high that it was almost as audible as the hum of the air conditioner. Liam had taken my hand and was kneading my fingers a little, a camera-perfect gesture that looked like comfort. But it wasn’t, Arthur. I think he was goading me on, warning me not to back down.

But most importantly there was the matter of Liam’s phone. It had started ringing not long after we left the hotel. Every five minutes, like clockwork, the Imperial Death March would start up (thank you, Jack), and every five minutes, after a beat or two, Liam would glance down at it and turn it off. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. “Li,” I said. “Will you
please
answer that thing?”

“It’s Chris,” he said, “from Legal. I told him that I would call him right after the launch. I can’t imagine what his problem is. He’s always like this. Everything is a crisis. Crisis-a-minute Chris is what Tristan calls him.” He turned to look at Lacroix. “That’s off the record, by the way.”

“Of course,” Lacroix said. Whether he had turned the camera on me or not, I don’t know, Arthur. Everything had slowed down, suddenly jumped into exquisitely sharp relief. Through the van window, I could see the flies lifting up and touching down in their drugged, intricate loops. “Everything hangs in such a delicate balance,” you said in that PBS interview. Can I be a know-it-all and say this, Arthur? You have no fucking idea.

“Are you cold?” Liam asked. It was like his voice was coming from far away. “Hey, Kent, can we turn down the AC?”

“We’re almost there,” said Kent.

But it wasn’t the AC. I proceeded to shiver while I got geared up in my long underwear and space suit. I proceeded to shiver while I paced around the shuttle hangar, watching Elle and Lacroix run back and forth across the launch pad, holding up tiny little meters to the sky, doing last-minute checks on lighting.

I shivered while I called Jack and Corinne. Jack refused to take the phone when Paula tried to hand it to him. Corinne, true to form, wouldn’t shut up. Both of the hermit crabs had died the night before, in one final skirmish that was years in the coming. There were legs
everywhere
, Corinne reported, and— She paused for a minute, distracted from her gory blow-by-blow.

“Are you in space right now?” she asked. I think it was the guttering reception, Arthur, that made her think I was even farther away than I actually was.

“No, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m still in Arizona.”

“Oh,” she said. “You sound like you’re in space. Like you’re a thousand miles away. No, a million.” And then she went right back to talking, saving me the trouble of saying anything more. Which was a good thing, Arthur, because I was starting to cry a little. I had to hold the phone away from my mouth. On the other side of the launch pad, a man was waving impatiently at me.
Time to go, go, go.
It seemed like everyone was manhandling me. Someone was practically pulling the phone out of my hands. The rule is that you can take phones with you, but they have to be turned off and secured in one of the million pockets of your space suit until you reach your low-orbit cruising altitude of about 120 miles up. Someone else was jerking on my watchband, making sure it was secure.

“OK, bye,” she said nonchalantly. “Have fun in space.”

And then, in spite of all the urgency, there were a few more minutes of milling around. Liam had been swallowed up by the crowd, but suddenly he reappeared. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said. “We just ran through the last test sequence. It went perfectly.”

“That’s good,” I said.

He held out his hands and then dropped them helplessly back to his sides. Our time was almost up. “Jess, can’t we—”

But I never learned what he was about to say, because right then his phone rang again. “For the love of God,” Liam said. “He’s like one of those pit bulls that latches on and never lets go. Just give me two minutes, Jess.”

“Take all the time you need,” I said. But he was already walking away and didn’t hear me.

Lacroix came up behind me. “Jessica. Fellow astronaut. Boarding call. They want us to load up.”

“Hang on a second,” I said. I was watching Liam, who was still walking out past the shade of the shuttle hangar and into the sunlight, away from the crowd. I remember exactly how he looked—the dread and sorrow of the moment has preserved it in a kind of dusky amber, frozen it, so it will survive the ages. He had the phone against one ear and his finger in the other, trying to drown out all the other sounds, to listen and to understand. When he did, he turned around and looked back at me. I mouthed something at him. This is the part that’s hazy to me. It was some two-syllable word; I remember the rhythm of it as it rolled off my tongue. Maybe it was his name. Maybe it was a single
sorry.
Maybe it was just the word
goodbye.

“It’s time to go,” Lacroix said.

Jess

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Tuesday, September 2, 2014 11:11 pm

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: 3 . . . 2 . . . 1

No, no, I’m not done yet. For God’s sake, you know better than that. I’m still trying to get this all down, all the important parts, anyway. This was one of the epiphanies I had the other night while I was out wandering around in my half-finished greenhouse, kicking at the stones I had so painstakingly laid down according to a scrupulous plan: that no matter how much I wish it otherwise, this has become the story of my life. I paced and paced, listening to the cricket din. (Have you noticed, Arthur, how harsh-sounding they get as the summer wears on? It’s as though there’s nothing left to them but wearisome and bitter truths.) Eventually, I came to my senses and went back inside.

Remember those pictures of the
Titan
shuttle that I subjected you to? It was so small that the first time I laid eyes on it in person, I almost laughed. I couldn’t believe that Liam was going to be going 120 miles up in the air in something not much bigger than a tour bus.

And now, here I was. I was the first one up, followed by Elle and Lacroix, who were both wielding cameras. The handrail was scalding to the touch, and the metallic, faintly caustic scent of rocket fuel was hanging in the air like a cloud.

I didn’t have time to pause at the top, to try to peek through the scaffolding beams out at the desert and take one last look at Liam, or everything else that I was leaving behind. There were two techs waiting on the platform, ready to maneuver me through the door. One of them took hold of one arm, one took hold of the other. Imagine getting loaded into a sideways tilt-a-whirl car by two carnies, impatient as hell to get the ride started, and that should give you a feel for the logistics. Everything is oriented straight up, so getting into your seat requires you to use handlebars located on the ceiling, and a surprising amount of upper-body strength. By the time I had managed to scramble into my seat, I was panting a little.

The window was to my left. I kept my eyes focused on it, turning my head as far as the plushy headrest would allow. The angle was such that I couldn’t see any land at all, nothing but blank blue sky. Because the auxiliary power source hadn’t been turned on yet, the cabin was hot as hell. Once Lacroix and Elle had been loaded into their seats, then the Spaceco guys climbed into the cabin, squeezing around us, jerking the straps on our seat harnesses tight. Gone was the solicitousness we’d been handled with all week. We were nothing more than bodies, cargo in space suits. They were barely making eye contact with us, and I couldn’t help but feel like this was part of some instructions they’d been given—to keep the conversation to a minimum, to keep us focused, to try as much as possible to suspend any extraneous, personal earthly ties. We were going. They were staying behind. “Barf bags are right in front of you,”
said one of the guys. “So you can grab one without even looking.”
Then he turned to the cockpit and said something to Bruce and Jed. I think it was “Don’t fuck it up.”