God is an Astronaut (2 page)

Bcc:

Subject: One more thing

Hey,

I just thought you might want to know that there’s something wrong with your out-of-office message. The auto-reply is bouncing back a stream of gobbledygook—lines of numbers and &s and antiparentheses ))((. It looks like the code Liam used to write for rockets on his old hulky mad-scientist computer, back when it was a labor of love for him, when we were living on beautiful hypotheticals. The language of spaceships, Li used to tell me, has a God-like logic, a rigorous, elegant syntax. It contains subsets inside subsets inside subsets that loop on into infinity. Every query is paired with an answer, every
if
with a
then
.

But not anymore. Arthur, yesterday morning, while I was brushing my teeth, I looked out the window and discovered three TV vans parked at the end of our driveway. Right at the bottom of the hill—they were clearly visible through that tree cluster there, which is still bare and leaves us exposed. One of the vans was from FOX News. Talk about adding insult to injury. I couldn’t stop staring at them. I stared at them while I tapped my toothbrush against the sink for five minutes, and then I went downstairs to stare at them from the sidelight next to the front door. You know how mirages disappear when you get closer to them? These didn’t. The CNN crew had some sort of miniature grill out, and they were barbecuing what appeared to be breakfast sausages.

Out of everything in that surreal moment, it was the sausages, for some reason, that assured me I wasn’t dreaming. It was still five-something out in Arizona where Liam is now doing triage, so after I texted him, I went around the house lowering all the blinds, starting at the front of the house and working my way around. Then, when the Fair and Balanced cameraman had gone out for a Dunkin’ Donuts run, I squirreled Jack and Corinne into the back of the Acura and went to Home Depot to return the chain saw. I had kept it five days longer than I was supposed to, and there was a zillion-dollar replacement charge on Liam’s AmEx.

By the time we came back, the vans were gone, but there’s no telling for how long.

Look, I’m going to come out and just say it now: Arthur, will you please, please write me back?

Over and out,

~J

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 2:09 am

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: Corrections

Dear Arthur,

So two auto-replies got bounced back from my last e-mail, a day’s space between them—the garbled original version followed by a corrected version with every comma perfectly in place. I take this to mean that you are checking in, that you are alive and reading this, even if you won’t write me back. Fair enough. I haven’t forgotten that silence was our agreement, or our disagreeable understanding. Just remember that you broke it first.

Of course, maybe it means no such thing. Maybe all it means is that some technocrat puttering around behind the scenes found and deleted an error in a line of code, or that someone, somewhere rebooted a server. These kinds of processes are, and remain, stubbornly mysterious to me. It’s my own fault. All those times I tuned out Liam’s explanations. All those wasted meetings with holier-than-thou IT Bob—remember those? Back in the planning stages of the BioSys database when he wanted to elaborate on his theories about the “architecture” of the information? I would try to care for about five minutes, and then I would just give up. Now it’s too late, and I just have to fake it.

But then I wonder about a lot of things these days, now of all times—“when thinking is pretty much useless.” That last line is a direct quote from Paula. A woman who makes her living from scanning people’s brains, who shuts them up in a tube and then commands them to add 1,552 and 397 and list synonyms for the word
sad
. When she saw me setting down my coffee mug and opening up my mouth to respond, she hurriedly added: “I mean
your
kind of thinking, Jess. Sometimes people just need to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and forget everything else.” Ever the dutiful sister, Paula has taken a few weeks off from work, abandoned her beloved MRI machine, and driven up from South Carolina to minister to us in our hour of need. This ministering takes the form of cleaning our out-of-control closets and tending to our incessant phone, a full-time job in and of itself these days. Reporters and anonymous busybodies don’t scare Paula a whit. She taught Corinne and Jack the phrase “No comment,” and they love it. It’s bulletproof, new in the repertoire, better than the threadbare “I’m rubber, you’re glue,” the tired “I know you are but what am I,” and the reliable old standby, “I forgot.”

But “pretty much useless” or no, that doesn’t stop me. I don’t believe I’ve been to Zingerman’s since last year, when you and I used to get coffee there, but last Friday, between classes, I walked over to Kerrytown. By the time I climbed the stairs and stepped into the deli’s half gloom, I’d completely forgotten what it was I’d come there for. I fingered the golden bottles of imported olive oil, the dusty bread rounds. I dallied in front of the dessert case, eyeing all those jeweled fruit tarts while people streamed in and out of the door behind me, my arms tucked behind my back, shuffling my feet in a silly, adolescent, pining sort of way. A man behind the counter was flaying a salmon in knife flashes so deft, so graceful, that the gestures looked a work of art—the slithering red flesh between his fingers, the silvery scales raining down around his ankles and collecting in the cuffs of his blue jeans. I am not pining away for anything. I would like to make that clear. But I never did remember what I wanted. Finally I gave up and bought a $10 rosemary baguette and a weedy gladiolus from the display by the door. Plants are like puppies to me—as you know. It’s impossible for me to pass them by, especially the scruffy, rough-around-the-edges ones.

I was walking back to campus, baguette under one arm, gladiolus under the other, when a woman wearing a blue velvet jacket accosted me on the sidewalk. “Jess?” she said. “Jess, is that you?” I had never laid eyes on this woman before, I swear to God, but there she was, holding onto my sleeve and pinning me down as if she had some sort of claim on me. Paula was right. If I hadn’t been distracted by all those useless thoughts, I might have been quick enough to sidestep her, but it was too late, I was trapped. I know I’m paranoid about people thinking I’m standoffish, but it’s not intentional. Remember that time we went out to lunch a few years ago? That time you snuck a tortilla chip onto the shoulder of my sweater while we were walking back to campus, and I traipsed along like an idiot for I don’t know how many blocks before I looked down and noticed it there? Well, laugh if you will, but it’s only gotten worse, and in the past couple of weeks I stopped even caring—when I see people coming for me all I want is to get away, before someone tells me something else I don’t want to hear.

So I didn’t even bother to feign recognition, to try to feel my way into the conversation, groping discreetly for clues, the way you’re supposed to. I just stared blankly at her. Blue Velvet Lady was positively shimmering in that jacket, but it was waaaay too cold for something that thin. My baguette knuckles were turning bright red.

“Jess, Jess,” she said, shaking my elbow as though she were trying to resuscitate me. “I heard what happened. I read that article in the
Post
,
and when I saw how they quoted Liam, I told Mike—”

“I’m sorry,” I cut her off. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. My name is Priscilla.” Priscilla is the name of Corinne’s latest imaginary friend, the newest member of her coterie—an exceptional collection of individuals, so my daughter tells me. I have no idea what possessed me to say it. But I didn’t wait for a response. I just put my head down and kept walking into the wind. By the time I got back to my office, the baguette was nearly broken in half—I’d been throttling it that hard. So I threw it into the trash, that stupid ten-dollar loaf of bread.

“Well, who was she?” Liam said later that night. We were on our way to Detroit—running late for Liam’s nine p.m. flight to Tucson. I was the one behind the wheel. Everyone on 94 drives like they want desperately to die; they can’t even be bothered to hide it, and I prefer my own scuttling, tail-between-my-legs defensiveness to Liam’s go-for-broke maneuvers, thank you very much.

“I just told you I don’t know,” I said. “If I knew who she was, why would I have told her my name was Priscilla?”

“Well, she’s sure as hell going to wonder about that the next time we run into her,” Liam said. “Jesus Christ, Jess.”

Which is true, but this is the least of our worries. It was only the beginning of a disastrous conversation, which became more disastrous with each passing mile. We were discussing what we should tell our children—whether to lie to them, whether to come clean, and if so, how much. Corinne is still safe, I think, but someone will say something to Jack—a teacher, some little know-it-all runt on the bus. It’s only a matter of time.

There’s something about trying to sum up your own take on a terrible truth, when you have to pare it down to something a five-year-old and a ten-year-old can—I was going to say “understand,” but that isn’t the right word, it isn’t even close. It reminds you that you don’t know shit. I was in favor of “Certain things are nobody’s fault.” Liam was more in line with “Human error inevitably makes its way into all our best efforts.”
Barreling along at seventy miles an hour on the freeway, we were going round and round about semantics and I don’t even want to think about what else until Liam finally slammed his hand on the dashboard and said, “Tell them whatever you want, Jess, tell them whatever you want.”

Pretty much useless, all this, I guess. I wonder how you are, you and your elegant pines. That adjective is yours, and I think of it from time to time. Pines
are
elegant—none of that deciduous fuss and muss. The days up there are probably still—what?—seven hours long, but the sap has probably already started rising. You might tell me, you know, if you felt so inclined, but maybe you don’t.

Anyway.

Jess

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2014 5:46 am

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: Re: synonyms for sad

There are forty-four, according to Merriam-Webster. You fell way short of that, and I beat you by two—only after
dolorous
came to me in a flash of inspiration during my drive home. It’s probably best if we don’t compare lists and don’t go back to see exactly which ones we missed, no? There was no insinuation in that deciduous remark of mine, none whatsoever. Ha! Seriously though, Arthur, watching the trees, I am struck by what a messy and arduous business it is. That’s all I meant. Forcing those buds out every spring, thousands of them, only to lose them all when the fall rolls around again. Not for the faint of heart.

I did put your question to Paula. There was a man once who came up with fifty-one synonyms, she said. That’s the record. He was forty-three years old, she said, and in the throes of such despair that he was no longer even able to tie his own shoes. When they stuck him in the MRI machine they saw that the topography of his brain was riddled with dark pockets, like shantytowns—whole neighborhoods that had just gone off the grid. My sister delivers anecdotes like these with an admirable matter-of-factness.

Glad to hear the work is going well, O man of few words.

From the woman of many.

~j

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 11:02 pm

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: Re: marauding and other activities

Believe it or not, yes. If Liam had time these days to be anything other than frantic, he would probably be mildly annoyed to discover that the greenhouse is the one thing I’ve actually made progress on during the past week. I wrote myself a greenhouse to-do list and taped it up on the calendar, smack dab on top of all of Jack’s rocket stickers. (I can’t look at those gaudy little spaceships without feeling queasy.) Every day I force myself to accomplish one thing on that list, even if it’s nothing more than running outside after dusk and scooping up a few armfuls of that brush I chain-saw-massacred back on the day of the accident, stuffing it into a Hefty, and lugging it down to the bottom of the hill so the trash guys can come haul it away.