God is an Astronaut (6 page)

Liam was supposed to fly back from Arizona on Monday night, but he was held up by some more unforeseen developments in the investigation (“Too complicated to get into,” he said in a tight voice that translated into “Don’t ask”). Then an ice storm hit early Tuesday morning, coming out of nowhere. Things were a little chaotic. I had made the mistake of predicting that school would be closed, but it wasn’t. The Ann Arbor school system was opening right on time, never mind the solid half inch of ice on the roads. The bus was coming in twenty minutes, and Arthur, all of us looked like complete wrecks. I only had one sock on. Corinne’s half-braided hair was unraveling. Jack smelled like little-boy funk. Getting him to take a shower is an ordeal to end all ordeals these days. I practically have to pick him up by the scruff of the neck, throw him into the bathroom, and slam the door shut behind me before he can claw his way back out.

Anyway, it was right then—with full-blown panic mode set in—that Corinne said something that made us forget all about the bus. She was standing at the upstairs window, twirling a Barbie around by its ratty hair, like a nunchaku. She said, “What’s that?”

“Honey, we really don’t have time—,” I started to say, but Paula went to look too, and then Jack. Gritting my teeth, I brought up the rear. Sure enough, just where the driveway broke through the trees at the bottom of the hill, there was the front of a huge . . . something. A van maybe. A cloud of exhaust rising, silently, troublingly ghostlike, above the tree line told us someone was inside, and had been for quite sometime.

“It’s just
sitting there
,” Jack said.

Corinne had stopped twirling the pantsless Barbie. “Maybe it’s a spy,” she said.

“If he is, he’s a pretty bad one.” With her elbow, Paula wiped the window clear. All our speculations were fogging things up. “Do you think he knows we can see him?”

Jack was worming his way under my elbow by then, trying to get a better look, but I grabbed his arm and steered him away. He was still in his Transformers T-shirt, sporting holes in both armpits. All his hair was standing up in tufts. He looked like an urchin, a little boy straight out of
Oliver Twist.
“Go get dressed, Jack,” I said.

“Why can’t I see?”

“Go get dressed.” I was squeezing him harder than I meant to, and I had to force myself to let go. I turned to Paula. “I’m going to see what it is.”

“Hmm,” was all she said, but even Paula’s single syllables are expressive. “Should I arm you with a steak knife? Maybe we should just sit tight, Jess.”

“Like prisoners? In our own house? For no good reason?” I was already thundering down the stairs. Liam has a monolithic pair of boots. They must have been manufactured in about 1965; the insides are slippery, polished by decades of man-sweat and wool socks. Wearing them is like walking around with bricks strapped to your feet—you feel an instant, crushing power with every step. I had already stepped into them and was yanking the salt-stiffened laces as tight as I could make them go. “I’ll be back in two minutes.” I made a V with my fingers and brandished them at Jack, who was glowering at me from the doorway. “Two minutes, Jack.”

The driveway was a death trap, too treacherous to even attempt, so I clumped my way straight down the hill, through the lawn, shattering the grass under my feet. My hands were balled up in fists inside my pockets. Maybe it was the boots—it was like I was channeling Liam, the way he has of walking, the shortest distance between two points, shoulders thrown back. When I got to the trees at the bottom of the hill—a stand of unwanted birches that thrives unapologetically in our drainage ditch—I just plunged straight through them. All the branches were glittering like diamond chandeliers around my head, swinging perilously right at their breaking points. I was trying to push my way through them when I lost my footing, and away I went—slithering ungracefully out the other side onto the street. I barely managed to get my hands out in front of me to catch myself as I slammed against the side of the Hummer parked there. It was like body-slamming a tank.

There was a long, loud horror-movie scream with an absolutely exquisite trill at the end, and for a second I thought it had come from me, that both my wrists had shattered on impact—I keep accidentally reading articles about early-onset osteoporosis—but no, it wasn’t. It was a woman inside the car, who I had scared the bejeezus out of. She threw open the passenger-side door and leaped out feetfirst. When she hit the pavement, she nearly lost her footing on the ice and went down before she caught herself, just in time. For a second neither of us could do anything. We just stood there, clutching our chests, gasping melodramatically, and staring at one another. She was taller than I am, a waifish woman in blue jeans, with a pixie cut and tiny silver studs, like braille, adorning the curves of her ears. She looked like a Sarah Lawrence graduate student. Not a trench coat in sight. All in all, a pretty disappointing spy.

She was the first to regain the power of speech. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Oh my God. That was so unnecessary. Screaming like that. What a junior high school stunt. Are you OK?” She slapped the Hummer’s monstrous hood a couple of times and whistled out between her teeth.

I said the first thing I could think of. “Nice Hummer.”

“Thanks.” She was either oblivious to my sarcasm or pretending to be. “Believe it or not, there was a screwup at the rental-car place. I thought I would go with it. Because hell, who
doesn’t
want asphalt-crushing power?” She shrugged her shoulders. “You know what they say. Desperate times, desperate measures.”

“So I’m told.” I pointed to the black-and-orange No Trespassing sign hanging on the birch next to the mailbox. Paula bought it a couple of weeks ago at Walmart. It really adds something to the place—a certain
Deliverance
feel that I hadn’t realized was lacking. “This is private property. You can’t park here.”

“Exactly,” she said. “It’s clearly marked, which is very helpful. That’s why I made sure to keep all four tires on the street. I didn’t go over, not by an inch. It was no easy feat. I had to get out and check several times. You know those ads where the Hummers are careening around out on some godforsaken dried-up lake bed? You know how you watch them and think, Why, why the hell are they doing that?
After you drive one of these bad boys, you understand. The drivers didn’t end up out there on purpose. They don’t actually
want
to be there. They just accidentally drove off the shoulder of the road, and they didn’t notice until it was too late. It looks like a joyride, but really they’re just frantically trying to find their way back to civilization. . . . Jessica Frobisher, right? It’s Dr. Frobisher?”

I had been starting back up the driveway, but I stopped at the sound of my name. I turned around and looked at her again. She was older than I had first pegged her to be, and she was smiling a little at me. Not unkindly, but a little alarm started pinging right then, very quietly in my ear.

“My name is Melissa Kramer,” she said. “I’m with the
New York Times.
I’ve been working on the Spaceco story. I was wondering if I might be able to ask you a couple of questions.”

Too late, I remembered where I was supposed to be, Arthur. Which was back in the house and not talking to strangers. I attempted to take a couple of steps back, but the pavement was tilted in a way that caused me to slide forward instead of back. It was like the ice and I were working at cross-purposes.

“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.” It must have looked odd, me shaking my head emphatically while I steadily glided toward her. I had to brace one hand on the Hummer to stop myself. “Loose lips sink ships”—that was the little slogan Liam liked to say back during Spaceco start-up days, when they were signing everyone to confidentiality agreements, and now it’s practically become our official family mantra. “There’s a number they set up for media inquiries. You’re a journalist, right? So I’m sure you know the drill. If you have a pen, I’ll give it to you: 888-727—”

“I got it, thanks.” Even cutting me off mid-sentence, the woman managed somehow to sound perfectly agreeable. She had her head tilted, sizing me up. Something about her look at that moment made me think of you, of your face when it’s wearing my least favorite expression. You know which one I’m talking about, so don’t pretend you don’t. It’s the expression that says any number of things is being read between any number of lines, but you are not, you are never, going to tell me what they are. “I’ve called it. Several times, actually. The people I’ve talked to have been very pleasant and . . . How should I say it? Less than forthcoming.” She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and flung them out, a gesture that looked like an apology, but wasn’t. “That’s why I’m here. And in answer to your question, yes, I do know the drill. The drill is, when the door doesn’t open, you find a window and start knocking obnoxiously on that instead.”

“Well, you guys keep picking the wrong window.” I had been backing up, moving toward the grass, heel, toe, heel, toe, but I stopped then and turned to meet her head-on. All the blood was surging to my head. It felt good to let someone have it, like something I’d been waiting for for a long time. “You’re not even in the right state. Maybe flyover country all looks the same to you, but I’ve got some news for you, Melissa. You’re about two thousand miles off. If you want to talk to my husband, you’re going to have to get back in that Hummer and drive until you see cactuses. No one here knows a thruster from a hole in the ground, and last time I checked nobody had added me to the Spaceco payroll as a company spokesperson. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

I started to turn around, but there she was, right next to me, as though neither one of us had moved at all.

“That’s too bad,” she said. “If you asked me, I’d say they need all the spokespeople they can get, Dr. Frobisher.” Another step, and still she was right at my elbow. “Dr. Frobisher. Do you know anything about Norell Ops?”

“No.” We took another three strides perfectly in tandem. Someone watching us from across the street could have mistaken us for dance partners, and damn good ones at that.

“You should. You should ask your husband about it. If you don’t hear about it from him, someone else will tell you.”

That faint pinging alarm, which had fallen quiet, began to ping again, a little louder this time. I stopped, but something kept me from turning around. “Like you?” I said. Up in the frozen trees somewhere, one lonely, mysterious bird was singing—an all-clear, maybe, or a warning. Someone savvier than me would have been able to name it, but oh, Arthur, there are so many things I don’t know. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate.

“I have a contact at NASA,” Melissa said. “We lived in the same dorm freshman year at Princeton, believe it or not.” She was standing just behind me, talking quietly into my ear. She knew I was listening. “I’m sure you already know, there’s a lot of back-and-forthing between NASA and the commercial space people. Everyone in that field is specialized to the nth degree. Anyway, Cam was the one who first told me about Norell Ops. They’re a contractor based in Dayton. Computer equipment. They manufacture switches in a lot of aircraft control panels. NASA looked into using them a while back, but they ended up passing because of what he called, in quotes,
‘concerns’ some of the engineers had. There were some anomalies on the readouts, a couple of glitches they couldn’t seem to kill. A year or so later, he heard a rumor that Spaceco had signed a deal with Norell, but he couldn’t say for sure. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“I think I get the gist, yes,” I said. I opened my eyes. I looked up the hill toward the house. It’s hard to explain, Arthur—it was like I was staring at it from a long ways off, just like a stranger watching it flash onto one of those TV screens on which it had no doubt appeared. I was free to my rightful judgment of what I saw there. The listing blue shutters. The slovenly piles of sod, stripped away from the foundation of my fabulist greenhouse. The rosebushes I had brutally shorn down last fall, when I was at my most bitter, and then trussed up in intricate twine nets, telling myself I could impose a new and more sensible arrangement upon them, that all my scratches and scars would be my proof and my painful consolation. There was the stained-glass window above the front porch, glimmering its baroque purples and reds. I call it the zinnia window, because that’s what it looks like. The person who made it went a little overboard with all the petals and tracery. It was the handiwork of some kind of savant, or else someone saddled with profound compulsions. It all seemed to me then, standing there, unable to look away, like the most damning of evidence.

“Dr. Frobisher,” Melissa said. Her voice was weirdly gentle, almost kind in its cajoling. “You have to trust me. I’ve been in this business long enough to know. Insinuations, questions that go begging for answers, they’re worse. They inflict far more damage than the truth, no matter how bad it is. You have to put me in touch with your husband. I have to talk to him.”