When Life Turned Purple (7 page)

Russ swallowed. “Oh, they probably heard their parents talking about it.”

“Their parents say they didn’t. And even if they did, how many six-year-olds understand what it means if they overhear their mother saying, ‘I had an abortion when I was nineteen’?”

Russ’s pressed his lips together and shook his head.

“The soul knows,” said Lia.

“I never heard about any of this stuff,” said Russ.

“Well,” said Lia, “it’s not so PC to talk about it. And even women who are pro-abortion themselves are still pretty uncomfortable with talking about their own abortion, if they ever had one.” She cocked her head to one side as she looked at Russ. “But back to this email…have you heard anything about her?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Well, not exactly nothing. I got an email from her, too, but I deleted it without reading it.”

“Maybe you should read it now,” said Lia, “if you can still access it.”

Russ nodded. He clicked on the email in Trash. It was pretty much the same as Lia’s email, but he read it aloud to Lia anyway. Saying Emma’s words out loud made him realize how desperate and angry Emma must have been when she wrote the emails.

“If she….” Lia started. “If…well, maybe you could call her?”

“And what?”

Lia started swiping her phone’s screen. “I’ll look up some websites and get you some numbers, emails, and stuff. You can call her and give her this information. You can email it to her, too. But better call her first because who knows when she’ll check her email? We don’t want it to be too late.”

“I called her sorority sisters,” Russ reminded her. “And she was in therapy and on medication.”

“Right,” said Lia, looking at her screen. “But women after abortion need a special type of therapy to heal. Abortion isn’t normal grief or mourning, like someone dealing with the death of a loved one. It isn’t something that happened to the woman; it’s something the women actively sought—and paid—to do. It wasn’t intentional, it was done out of ignorance and to a large extent, the woman who has an abortion is also a victim—a victim of deception and propaganda who not only hurts her baby, but also hurts herself.” She glanced at Russ. “Neither of you understood exactly what abortion is nor what you were doing, but what happened still happened. A lot of therapists won’t address the issue on those terms. And drugs aren’t the answer because the emotional pain a woman like Emma is feeling is a very normal and natural reaction that needs to be dealt with; it’s not some chemical imbalance or mood disorder or something.”

“But her friends....”

“Her friends can’t help her, either. Most likely, they’re under the same misinformation as she was. And if they’ve had abortions themselves, they may not appreciate hearing what she has to say about her new information; they may not have dealt with it properly themselves. Or they may know all the facts about it and just not care—and not understand or sympathize with someone who
does
care.” Her eyes returned to her screen.

Suddenly, Russ noticed he had an incoming message from a masked number. He’d turned his phone off since before the wedding and wouldn’t have noticed the call had he not seen it on the screen.

“Hello?” he said.

“Is this you, Russ, you murdering little slimeball?!”

He recognized the voice of Emma’s sister in Somerset and shot a look of alarm at Lia, who frowned and gestured,
Who is it?

“Emma’s
dead
, you nasty little rat! We just got back from her funeral! And it’s all because of
you
—you, you, you! That’s what her note said! It was all about you and how you just dumped her when she was at her lowest. You just chucked her aside and moved on to some other chick!”

“No way, it wasn’t like that,” said Russ before Emma’s sister could continue. “I tried—I tried to work things out with Emma, but it just didn’t go. And I met Lia way after me and Emma had broken up.”

“I never liked you, you ignorant little redneck!”

He knew. “Listen, I tried to help Emma—”

“Oh, how freakin’
noble
of you!”

Russ wondered what Emma’s note had said. Maybe there was still something he could do—

But no. Russ shook his head from side to side as if trying to shake something off. It still hadn’t sunk in. Emma was dead. Her sister had just come back from the funeral. Everything was final. He couldn’t help her anymore. He’d failed. It was too late.

Emma’s sister kept on screeching and cursing at him. Between all the abuse, he picked up phrases like “drove her car off a cliff” and “blood-alcohol level through the
roof
!” and what a jerk he was, not only for having left her, but for hooking up with Emma in the first place. But Russ didn’t say anything else in his defense nor did he hang up. He kept wondering if he had contacted her upon receiving her email, would he have been able to save her?

But amid all Emma’s sister’s yelling and crying, the story came out. Emma had been found on Saturday—dead since Friday. The wedding had been Saturday afternoon. Emma must have timed the email to come after she’d already be gone.

Finally, there was a sudden click and then silence.

Lia sat there with her legs outstretched, holding her phone in her lap.

Russ spread out his palms in a helpless gesture, then punched the mattress. “What could I have done, damn it?”

Lia gave him a gentle smile and shook her head.

“Emma’s sister always hated me. She looked down on me because I didn’t go to college and I own a gun. But still. I don’t know what else I could have done.”

“I think both of you did whatever you knew to do,” said Lia. “And it just wasn’t enough. But you couldn’t have known.”

“I couldn’t have stayed with Emma,” Russ said. “I mean, even without the abortion…how much longer would we have stayed together?” He chewed his lips while gazing at Lia, then said, “I can’t regret leaving Emma because….I have you. I like you more than I ever liked Emma, even during our good times. Even during those times when I really felt like I loved her. But it was never how I feel about you.”

Lia leaned forward and put a hand on Russ’s arm. He felt a comforting warmth sink into his arm and flow through his veins. He opened his fist and put his hand over Lia’s.

“I love you, too,” said Lia.

Russ couldn’t believe he was talking about his ex-girlfriend with his new girl—with his new
wife
. He always paid a price for doing that before. The new girlfriend always started drilling him about the old girlfriend and the old relationship. And if he told her everything, she kept grilling him and comparing herself to the previous girl. But if he tried to deflect her, she got upset that he was trying to hide things from her. But Lia took it so well, he felt totally natural about it.

“Do you think it’s my fault?” he said.

Lia inhaled deeply before she answered. “Look,” she said, “Emma could have just typed in a search for ‘healing after abortion’ and found everything she needed—support, weekend retreats, therapy, empathy and validation, helpful advice. She could’ve done that easily. Thousands of women have. Why didn’t she? I don’t know. Did she not think to? Or did she think to, but just not do it in the end? I guess we’ll never know.”

Russ nodded. Yeah, she could’ve done that.

And so could you.

Russ froze, his hand still over Lia’s. Yeah. He could have done that, too. Why did he think of therapy and medication and freakin’ sorority sisters, but not even think to do a simple search online for post-abortion support?

He looked at Lia, his eyes wide.

“What’s wrong, Russ?”

“I—I mean—well—I didn’t, either.” His shoulders sagged. “I didn’t think of it, either.”

Lia nodded. “It’s hard. The way the culture is set up—the expectations, the attitudes, the legality and ease of access, the way it’s considered a ‘right’—and the fact that there are women who don’t regret their abortions, women who even seem happy to have had them, and women who’ve had several, it makes it seem like the experience is different than it actually is.” She put her other hand on top of Russ’s. “Look, Emma was focusing more on the fact that you left, that you rejected her and hurt her instead of looking at how she—unintentionally—rejected her own child and hurt herself. You were looking at it as
Emma’s
problem, not yours. And you also saw it as a mental health issue. You know, thinking she’s ‘crazy’ rather than seeing her as a human being with a very natural need to heal from an abortion. Okay, you guys eventually saw abortion for what it was, but then you started looking at the side issues surrounding it rather than focusing on the root issue.”

Russ pondered her words, then nodded. “Yeah. I guess I didn’t really want to look into the root issue. I wanted to....” He searched for the right words. “I wanted to just slather some salve all over my own guilt. But I didn’t really look too deeply to solve the problem.” His eyes met Lia’s. “I guess I wanted to feel good more than I actually wanted to be good.”

Lia gave a sad laugh. “That’s pretty much everyone’s problem in a nutshell.”

Russ felt his heart expanding as he looked at Lia. He just kept falling in love with her again and again. A part of his heart remained small and hurt for Emma. And maybe it always would.

“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Lia looked startled. “Just like that? Are you sure you’re okay for driving?”

“I need a break from all this,” he said. “It’s pretty damn heavy.”

Lia chewed her lower lip and her brow wrinkled as she looked at him, but she nodded and swung her feet off the bed.

“You’re still going to have to deal with all this, you know,” she said. “There’s still more to do.”

“I guess,” said Russ, even though he wasn’t sure what she meant about there being “more to do.” “But right now, I just can’t deal with it anymore. I just want to forget about the whole thing right now. We’ll come back to it later.”

Together, they went out to the car and slid in.

Russ thought that if they could just distract themselves from the whole issue with Emma, then they could still have their honeymoon and get their marriage off to a good start. He couldn’t do anything about the past, about Emma, or the baby they could have had.

Emma couldn’t move on and now she was lying cold in a grave. But he had a new life now with Lia and he wanted to make it the best it could be.

But neither of them realized what that night would bring.

They were standing on the deck of the ferry, watching the sunset. It was too cold to be out on the deck, but they huddled together, Lia holding hot chocolate from the vending machine and watched the frisky waves and the darkening sky.

“Hey, what’s that?” said Lia, pointing to where the sky was already dark.

Russ squinted up at where Lia was pointing. He saw a vague outline of purple, something like a cloud-shaped soap bubble.

“Cool,” he said. “Is that like a supernova?”

“No,” said Lia, her brow wrinkling as she stared at it.

“Okay,” he said. “Hey, could those be Northern Lights? Like what they get in Alaska? Cool. I can’t believe we’re getting those all the way down here for once.”

But Lia continued to scrutinize the object without replying.

As the sky grew darker, the purple thing grew brighter. But overall, it remained hazy and translucent.

The ferry docked and people came out for one final look at the scenery.

“Hey,” said an old man. “Look over there! We’re finally getting auroras all the way down here!”

People gathered near Lia and Russ to ooh and ahh at the object.

“I’ve seen auroras and that’s not it,” said one curly-haired middle-aged lady. “You know what? I bet it’s a nuclear test. Yep, I saw on YouTube what it looks like when they explode a nuclear bomb in space and this is exactly what it looked like.”

That got everyone talking.

Russ looked at Lia. “Is that what it is, baby?”

Still not taking her eyes from the sky, Lia shook her head. “No. An explosion from space looks like a bright flash and then it expands faster than the eye can see. And it keeps expanding. There’s nothing to stop it. We wouldn’t be able to see it beyond the initial flash and even if we could, it wouldn’t retain its shape like this.” She rubbed the rail of the ferry absently. “I can’t tell if it’s above our atmosphere or below it. I wonder if the ISS can see it when it flies by.”

As they were watching, there was a small bright flash and the wrinkles on Lia’s forehead deepened.

“Ooh, a shooting star!” someone called out.

“Russ,” said Lia turning her face toward his. “Let’s go home. I want to call a few people.”

“Sure, baby,” he said.

As they drove off the ferry, Russ noticed his GPS wasn’t working.

“I don’t need it,” he said. “But it sure comes in handy at times.”

Lia checked her phone. “The GPS here isn’t working, either. And look at all these tweets. GPS is down for tons of people.”

“What’s going on?”

“I think it means that thing is definitely above our atmosphere, but still in our orbit.”

“Huh.” Russ didn’t know what else to say, so he kept on driving. They passed a supermarket and Russ pulled in.

“Listen, sweetie,” said Lia. “Can you just drop me off at home first? I need to make these phone calls without distractions. And I need my computer.”

“Can your telephone calls and computer do anything about that big tough purple bubble?” said Russ.

“No, but—”

“So let’s stock up on supplies first,” said Russ.

Lia closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and nodded.

They bought lots of duct tape, canned food, boxed food, grains and legumes, frozen food, and water, plus medical supplies and all sorts of batteries. Russ made sure of getting a nice stash of whiskey. He had a stash of supplies at home, too, just in case of earthquakes or power outages or whatever, but he felt better having more. They filled two carts over the top.

“The GPS goes on standby and it’s buy-out time?” said the cashier.

“You never know,” said Russ.

She eyed him for a moment, then said, “Hmm. Maybe I should take some extras home with me tonight.”

They stuffed everything into the car as best they could, considering their luggage was there, too. They ended up filling up the back seat and Russ strapped a suitcase onto the roof.

“You really have no idea what it is?” said Russ as they pulled into his reserved parking space.

“No, I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Lia said, shaking her head.

“It looks like a soap bubble, but it took out the GPS satellite.”

Lia looked at him.

“Right?” he said.

“I think so,” she said. “I think that’s what that flash was. The satellite must have crashed into it and exploded.”

“Anything else you can figure?” he asked.

“It’s huge,” Lia said. “If it’s that far up and this much visible, then it’s huge.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, have you ever seen the ISS whizz by at night?”

“The Space Station?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure. It looks like a fast-moving star.”

“Well, that’s the size of a football field and pretty close to us—like 400 kilometers up. The GPS satellites are over 20,000 kilometers above us—if that’s what indeed hit this thing and the GPS being knocked out here isn’t just a coincidence—and we can see this object very clearly. This purple thing is I-don’t-know-how-many-times bigger than the ISS. But it’s gigantic.”

They sat there for a moment in the dark, mulling that over, then Russ opened his door. Lia opened hers as Russ hurried over to hold the door for her. “Go on in, baby. I’ll bring everything in myself.”

Lia gave him a small smile and nodded. Then she hurried into the building.

Russ tried to bring everything in as quietly as he could. He rummaged around trying to find a place for everything. Lia sat in the bedroom and he heard her on the phone. Mostly, she listened rather than talked, but he heard her typing on the keyboard. A couple of times, he peeked in and she was sitting up straight, her fingers over the keyboard, staring at the screen with her head cocked and one shoulder hunched all the way up to hold the phone against her ear.

Evan called Russ at one point to see what Lia knew, but Russ told him he’d call him later.

For lack of cabinet space, Russ arranged some of the supplies under their bed. Then he grabbed a beer from under the sink. He hated cold beer on cold days. Room temperature beer was much more comforting. He took the beer out on the little porch and looked up at the sky. The purple thing was still there. It looked delicate, like a soap bubble, but it apparently wasn’t. How fast was that GPS satellite traveling? He couldn’t remember, but he knew they were big and fast. It didn’t seem to bother the big purple bubble at all, but he couldn’t tell for sure from here.

Finally, Lia came out of the bedroom. She saw Russ and joined him on the porch, giving him a tired smile. Then she also looked up at where the big purple bubble still hung.

“What’d they say?” he asked.

“Well,” said Lia, “they don’t know.”

“What?”

“They don’t know anything. They can’t figure out what it is, where it came from, what it’s made of and if it’s intelligent—”

“Intelligent?”

“We don’t know if it’s a sentient being or a space anomaly or a UFO of some kind…nothing.” Lia took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “But it did take out the GPS satellite. And it’s not moving, which is weird. It’s totally resisting gravity.”

Russ stared at Lia as she spoke. Then he gazed back up at the sky. “It’s so weird,” he said. “After so many years of stories and movies about this kind of thing—and now it’s finally happening for real.” It was so strange; he couldn’t even feel real fear about it. Maybe it had come to destroy the whole planet. Or maybe not. But he felt no fear. Just intense wonder and a driving need to know what it was.

Lia nodded.

Russ held the porch rail and leaned on it, looking over his shoulder at Lia who continued to gaze at the sky. “I’m glad I have you, baby. Whatever happens, I’m glad that at least I’ll be going through it with you.”

Lia slowly turned her face to gaze at Russ. Her eyes were dark violet in the night, yet luminous, and a faint smile hovered over her lips.

“Methinks you mean more than just my space connections,” she said.

Now Russ smiled. “Well, I’ve got my supplies, my gun, and my girl, so I’m ready to play out the end of the world.”

A small laugh escaped Lia. “I hope it won’t come to that.” She shook her head and laughed again. “I can’t believe we’re talking like this. You’re right. It just doesn’t feel real.”

“Do you think we should stay inside?”

“Mmm…no, not yet. They’re not getting any radiation readings from it.”

“That’s weird, no?”

“Very.”

“What if the Space Station crashes into it?”

“That would be pretty bad. But right now, that thing is very far from the Space Station. I mean, we’re talking about a distance of around 16,000 kilometers from the Space Station.” Seeing Russ’s puzzled face, she said, “It’s like the distance from Italy to Australia—a 21-hour flight.”

“Ah.” Pause. “Don’t you have a more American comparison?”

“It’s farther than the distance between New York and Singapore.”

“Is Singapore in China or Japan? I always forget.”

Lia smiled. “Neither.”

“So there’s nothing to worry about?”

Lia took a deep breath. “No one knows yet.”

“Aliens?”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything in there. Maybe it’s an alien itself.”

“Traveling out there with nothing to protect it?”

Lia nodded, turning to stare wistfully at it. “Yeah. Sounds like a dream, no?”

“How come nobody warned us about it coming?” Russ asked, frowning.  “What were they trying to hide?”

Lia shook her head. “They never saw it coming. It just appeared here.” She paused. “They think it came from another dimension and that’s why there was no sign of it until now.”

“Another dimension?” Russ’s head jerked back and he frowned. “I didn’t know you guys were into paranormal stuff. I thought it was all cold, hard rational logic.”

“Hm!” Lia gave a close-mouthed laugh. “Conventional theories can only explain so much,” she said. “Science is dealing more and more with the bizarre. The existence of another dimension—or of many other dimensions—helps to explain a whole load of things in science. We can’t see these extra dimensions, but we do see evidence of them. It’s sort of like how the gravitational wobble of a far-off star indicates an otherwise undetectable exoplanet. And so, certain anomalies indicate unknown dimensions.”

“Huh,” said Russ. “But what does it mean? Could more just show up?”

Lia turned her face toward his. “That’s one concern,” she said. “We don’t know how many more of these there are and how many more—if any—are coming. And except for knocking out our satellites, we don’t yet know the effect of even just this one on us. But what if more come? It’s definitely a concern.”

As Russ looked out over the neighborhood, all the porches he saw held people standing with their faces held up toward the sky. People pointed up and spoke quietly.

But the streets were almost empty.

Russ called Evan to fill him in on everything Lia told him.

Then Russ and Lia went to veg out on Russ’s rust-colored velveteen sofa in front of the TV.

As Russ hit the power button, he said, “Are we going to hear more than what you were able to find out?”

Lia chewed her lower lip for a moment, then said, “No, I don’t think so.”

But they sat together and watched anyway. The newscasters were full of reassurances that the “purple space bubble” didn’t seem to be giving off any radiation or otherwise harmful emissions, nor did it seem to be approaching any closer. Interviews with citizens around the world garnered the usual reactions: objective interest (“Before jumping to conclusions, I’d like to take a wait-and-see approach!”), the range of It’s-the-End-of-the-World-as-We-Know-It from the religious (“People need to repent and seek out God!”) to the conspiratorial (“The elite has convened together to create this hologram and scare us into cooperating!”) to the Eat-Drink-and-Make-Merry (“We’re gonna dance the night away with great music and lots of booze!”) to the Universal Optimist (“It’s too beautiful to be sinister; this is the universe trying to communicate with us and bring us to mutual love and peace—we plan to celebrate and welcome it!”).

Lia frowned when she listened to the conspiracy theorists.

“What’s up, baby?” Russ asked.

“Well, I hadn’t considered that. The most logical explanation is that this
is
manmade.”

“But what about that satellite crash?”

“They could blow up a satellite as it passed by or through the anomaly. How would we down here be able to tell the difference? And the news would only tell us what they themselves had been told. They’re just mouthpieces with no real way to gather or process actual scientific evidence.”

“Could there be information-spin at your level?” Russ said. “Like the people giving you the low-down—could they be passing on misinformation?”

Lia’s frown deepened and she leaned forward. “It could…but it doesn’t seem likely. I spoke to people I know well and trust. I’m hearing a lot of genuine bewilderment and wonder.” She traced her lips with her finger. “The thing is, they haven’t picked up on any indications that it’s manmade, like a military hoax or something.” Lia looked up at him. “But I’d prefer that explanation, quite frankly.”