Here & There (19 page)

It’s unclear as to what motivates Eve at this point. The only information apparent is her refusal or inability to connect with Ecco. That being said, for all we know it could have more to do with Eve’s feelings about Reidier, the move, or her writing.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated dynamic, but one that continues to manifest itself again and again, even after their arrival. A few similar instances in particular jump out.

The first moment is picked up by the Department’s nanocameras in Otto’s room. Eve unpacks a box of clothes and is putting them in a
dresser. Otto dashes back and forth around the room, retrieving and placing his toys along the three windowsills of his massive bay window overlooking a lush elm tree.

From down the hall, Reidier cheerily says, “Can you get over the size of this place? Ecco and I got lost twice on the way here.”

Reidier appears in the doorway, carrying yet another box. Ecco stands next to him, holding onto his pant leg. He gazes up at the ceiling, which arches upward into a semi-hexagon.

Eve half smiles and directs Reidier to place the box in the corner, and then asks him if he can put the bed frame together. While Reidier screws the pieces together, Ecco meanders over to the high-backed cushioned chair that juts out of a window nook. He sits on it upside down, with his back on the seat and puts his legs vertical to rest them on the seat back. Still staring up at the ceiling, he begins to move his feet in the air.

Otto notices this and giggles. He quickly lies down on the floor and thrusts his legs into the air. As he moves his feet in a similar fashion to Ecco’s, it becomes clear that the boys are pretending to walk on the ceiling.

Eve finishes with her box and turns around. She frowns and admonishes Otto to stop that, he’s going to get dirty on the floor.

He grudgingly complies and drops his legs to the floor. Ecco also stops, but stays seated upside down, watching.

“Get up, Otto!” Eve insists.

Otto does so and watches his father finish putting together the bed frame.

“Where’s Ecco?” Otto asks.

“In his room,” Eve says.

“Why not my room?” Otto pushes.

Reidier watches Eve.

“Because like your father said, this place is huge. You each get to have your own room.”

Otto finally grasps what his mother is saying and literally puts his foot down, stomping it against the wood floors. “I want Ecco!”

“No, Otto,” Eve insists, “You need different rooms.”

“No!”

“Otto!”

“No!” Otto stamps his foot again.

Eve moves toward him, “Stop it, Otto!”

Reidier steps between mother and son. “Eve, why don’t we figure rooms out later? Two bedrooms, a bedroom and a playroom. It could all work.”

Eve turns on Reidier, “Work for you, right? It would work for you fine. You’ll be off at work, chatting away with Kai,
⁵⁰
while I’m the one at home trying to manage everything! Make our little ‘transition’ go smoothly. You’re right it’s all fine, everything’s fine. Our new life is just fine!”

She storms out before he can respond. Reidier starts to follow her, but stops at the sound of Otto crying. He goes and squats down next to Otto. Puts his arms around him and whispers reassurances in his son’s ear. Reidier kisses the top of Otto’s head and rests his chin on it.

Reidier and upside-down Ecco make eye contact.

Ecco smiles.

Reidier smiles. “Mommy just needs time. We’ll put two beds in Ecco’s room, so you can sleep there some nights.”

It would be presumptuous and misleading to offer insights into Eve’s inner workings. Still there are some overlapping elements between this scene and the car incident. The boys are at play. Reidier has a
light, positive attitude, which seems genuine but emphasized for Eve’s benefit. After Eve detonates, Reidier reacts with patience and understanding. Is this due to his compassion and empathy for her emotional state or is it motivated by a guilt he feels for forcing the move?

The second moment captures Reidier’s more proactive efforts to brighten up their transition. Unlike their other interactions, this one seems devoid of conflict. The shift of focus to amelioration, however, is no less revealing.

Eve sits on a bench swing on their new veranda, enjoying the uncommonly warm autumn weather, taking a rare break from her frenetic drive to unpack all of their boxes within the first twenty-four hours. The boys play out front as she sips a Nantucket Nectar and reads, of all things,
Skeleton Crew
by Stephen King. (Eve tended toward more highbrow literature, but it’s easy to imagine she was in need of a guilty pleasure.)

Reidier, dressed in a sport coat and corduroy pants, strolls up from the street carrying a couple of grocery bags. As he mounts the steps, he holds them up like trophies.

“Whole Foods. We have a Whole Foods within walking distance. Right where Waterman meets Blackstone, or Butler, not sure which it is there.”

Eve looks up from her book.

“And, AND, they had your favorite—morel mushrooms!” He lowers the bags. “How’s that for a first night feast?”

“Fantastic,” Eve responds. “As soon as we find the box with the pans.”

Reidier bites his bottom lip and plops down next to her with a grunt. Eve lets out a little laugh at this. Reidier looks to her as if about to say something, but he stops short.

Eve kisses his shoulder and leans against it.

“Is this a deck or a veranda?” Reidier asks.

“A veranda. It has a roof, and goes along the front and side.”

“Wow. We have a veranda.” They swing back and forth. “So then is this a porch swing or a veranda swing?”

Eve smiles at this. “It’s just our swing.”

He leans his head against hers. They listen to the creak of the swing for a few moments. Near their thighs, a slight movement catches the viewer’s eye. It’s their fingers locking and interlocking. “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll find the box of pans if you’ll bathe the boys?”

Eve doesn’t respond. After a few moments, Reidier looks down at her. Eve feels his shift and finally looks up at him and nods.

A tender moment, a needed respite. Reidier’s actions seem neither manipulative nor calculating. Likewise Eve’s reactions are neither antagonistic nor passive aggressive. While their issues have not been “resolved,” this interaction does not reek of repression. It’s connection in its most basic form.

Eve and Reidier are not in denial. If anything, this scene on the veranda is a testament to the strength of their relationship. The two are connected on a very deep level. The tension, ironically, is a result of this. Unlike most modern nuclear families, the Reidiers are not shattering apart in a chain reaction. The two never consider Reidier not pursuing his work. They never toss around the idea of Reidier moving out first to see if it’s a good fit, while Eve and the boys maintain their lives in Chicago. They never even mention the option of Eve taking a trip to the south of France, just to recharge. The notion of separating never, not for a second, appears on their radar.

It seems that the two of them have internalized the Colonial Effect: their existences are completely and utterly entangled with the
other. As a result, tension and conflict spring forth from a lack of options.

What’s important to grasp, however, is that neither of them ever consider the relationship itself flawed, part of the problem, or the problem itself. Whatever is going on is not because of how they are or how they feel about each other. Which is why they can, and must, put whatever it is aside for a few moments and sit together on their swing. They love each other.

This lull, though comforting, also makes the last instance more unnerving. What we see on the Department’s nanofeeds seems completely mundane.

Eve sits on the porch swing. She’s reading again. She comes to a stopping point, dog-ears a page, and puts the book down. She stands up, still holding the book, and walks at a leisurely pace down the front steps of the veranda, disappearing from view behind the hedges.

A few moments later, she strolls back up the steps, carrying her book in one arm and Otto in the other. Her right arm is swung around his lower back, his legs scissored around her right side, bottom resting on her hip, his hands resting on the top of her shoulder, holding the Flip Cam.

She opens the screen door, and the two of them disappear into the house heading upstairs.

If recording storage space had been needed, a section like this would have surely been deleted. I myself even watched it on fast forward and considered it an unnoteworthy moment.

At least from that camera angle.

But watching once again, looking at the footage found on Reidier’s hard drive—the footage recorded from the Flip Cam he gave the boys—it’s a very different event.

Otto and Ecco sit together on the front lawn. Otto’s manning the Flip Cam. He focuses on their feet. Otto’s bare left foot presses against Ecco’s bare right foot. Their heels push together, both sets of toes curling against the other’s. The boys giggle.

Otto swings focus to the ground between their legs. An anthill in the lawn. Otto leans in close, focusing on the ants running in and out of the opening at the top.

A finger points into the frame. From the angle, it’s obviously Ecco’s. It lightly brushes some of the sandpile away. The ants scurry away and then return to assess the damage and begin repairs. The ants find the finger still there. Some of them crawl up its side.

A laugh emerges offscreen from Ecco. A second from Otto quickly starts up.

The finger is joined by the thumb and pinches an ant between the two nails. Then the finger gently places both parts of the severed ant back on the anthill.

The camera swings back again to a close-up of their toes curling against each other. More giggles.

In a disorienting lurch, the camera angle pulls back into a God shot. It’s a baffling few moments until bits of Eve swing across the screen. She has just picked up Otto from the front lawn.

After some quick adjustments and judging from the shot directly into her ear, it appears Eve has secured Otto on her right hip. The frame jostles up and down with each step she takes. Otto turns the camera back on his brother.

It is literally an over-the-shoulder shot, with Eve’s shoulder obfuscating the foreground, and the image of Ecco sitting at the anthill, staring after them. He doesn’t cry out or ignore them. He just sits and watches, bouncing in the frame as it gets smaller with every step Eve takes.

The screen door creaks as Eve opens it. As it slams shut, it pixilates Ecco. Then Eve takes a turn and marches upstairs. The camera angles down on the stairs and finally cuts out.

Reidier eventually walked by the front door and gazed out to his new lawn and went to retrieve Ecco. This matter was never brought up inside the house. Did he and Eve discuss it while out on errands one day? Did they have a fight about it? Or did he simply write it off? Did he proceed with the hope that eventually Eve would snap out of what might be described as some sort of late-term, bipolar postpartum depression?

Maybe.

Maybe Eve meant to go right back out and get him. She couldn’t carry both the boys and her book? Or perhaps her back was sore from unpacking, and she could only carry one child at a time?

As easy as it is to jump to judge her, it is premature.

Especially considering the episode she had at the end of their last winter in Chicago.

A

TITLE CARD:
GALILEE 6:21

TITLE CARD:
EXPERIMENT 42

CONTROL ROOM, GOULD ISLAND FACILITY - 2007-09-26 15:49

IS1 O’Brien sits in his respective seat at the ready. Dr. Reidier sits wearing his tweed sport coat, his fingers tapping at the keyboard as he executes a series of final commands into the system.

The distant HIGH WHINE of the Quark Resonator rings out.

Dr. Reidier leans back and mumbles something inaudible to himself. Finished, Dr. Reidier turns to the camera.

DR. REIDIER
(serious and confident)

Biologics have proved a tad more tricky than we, and Director Pierce, had hoped. However, as Robert Pirsig says, experiments are never failures when they fail to achieve predicted results. They’re failures when they fail to test the hypothesis in question, when the data they produce don’t prove anything one way or another. Something like that. (half smiles at camera) For Experiment 42 we are maintaining the same quantum chromodynamic and energy levels from Experiment 41, however we are trying
████
entanglement swap. So, without any further ado . . .

Dr. Reidier nods at IS1 O’Brien and flips up his Plexiglas cover over Contact Button Alpha. His thumb absentmindedly runs back and forth across his lapel pin while . . .

IS1 O’Brien similarly addresses Contact Button Bravo.

DR. REIDIER (CONT’D)

Let us, as Samuel Beckett advises, “Fail again. Fail better.” In three, two, one, go.

Dr. Reidier and IS1 O’Brien simultaneously press Contact Buttons Alpha and Bravo.

CUT TO:

MIRROR LAB - SAME TIME

SPLIT SCREEN, on right side CLOSE-UP: empty reinforced-acrylic sphere over target pad.

LEFT SIDE, CLOSE-UP: orange sits inside reinforced-acrylic sphere over the transmission pad.

Orange remains perfectly still.

At 2007-09-26 15:51:00.40955543 a silent FLASH of a flame encircles the orange, like a mandorla, and both disappear leaving behind a heterogeneous pile of (what is later determined to be) various carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen compounds, along with oxidized iron particles.

NOTE: 400 picoseconds prior to flare-up, on the left side prior to transfer, the flame “halo” surrounding the orange tessellates, but not the orange.

RIGHT SIDE, at 15:51:00.40955543, the orange appears on the target pad. It appears intact, its spherical structure solid. On the outside of the acrylic sphere, frost immediately accumulates.