The Infinite Tides (34 page)

The plan had been that Keith would finish his training and when he was officially an active-duty astronaut Barb and Quinn would finally move to Houston and they would be a family again. He knew that Barb would not want to move, knew also that Quinn would be saddened by the decision but that she too would want to remain and continue her high school in the town where she had grown from a child into a young woman. Nonetheless when he was at last presented with the silver lapel pin indicating that the training period had ended and he had entered the roster of active-duty astronauts, he collected some information on relocating to Houston from the personnel office, a thick envelope of printed materials lauding the myriad cosmopolitan aspects of the city, and when he returned home he handed the entire packet to Barb and then watched, for a full week, as those pages remained on the kitchen counter, unread. He asked her if she had thought much about where she wanted to live or if she wanted him to poll those NASA employees he already knew who were living in Houston but her response was vague and he was left to wonder when the argument would come. When it finally did, it was exactly as he knew it would be. Barb maintained that he would be gone so often that it made little sense to move to Houston, particularly as Quinn was already established at her new high school.

“The only reason I was flying back and forth was because of the academy,” he had argued. “If she doesn’t want to go there I’m not going to make her, but there’s nothing keeping us from Houston now.”

“That’s not the only reason why we didn’t move,” she said. “You’re gone all the time. You’re still going to be gone all the time.”

He was silent. Incredulous.

“And Quinny has her friends,” Barb continued, “and she’s popular and she’s so beautiful. The boys are falling all over themselves for her.”

Silence, and then he said, “I can’t believe you talked her into this.”

“She talked
me
into this.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” he said, but he did believe it, immediately and completely, and the sensation was like a vast star collapsing all at once in his chest. It had not been his idea to commute back and forth to Houston but he had agreed to do so and in making this agreement had set a precedent that could not be undone. Perhaps he had thought he could shift her into the faster current, the current that he could see flowing under her feet but which, for reasons he still could not understand, was somehow invisible to her. Had he pushed too hard or had he not pushed nearly hard enough? But these were not even the right questions to ask. He had simply done what he had always done; he had fallen into the numbers like a man falling into his dreams and thought that somehow the people he left behind were locked into the orbit paths he had calculated for them and would continue to turn in those perfect paths, a radial distance forever matching the most simplistic articulation and needing no further calculation or concern.

Of course Barb won the argument; he did not even know why he tried to talk her out of it to begin with.

And so they did not move to Houston but they did move one last time. She brought him the brochure soon after he had been assigned
his first mission—the only mission he would ever undertake—amongst the first of his ASCAN group. The group had been told that the order in which they were chosen for the mission schedule was no reflection of their individual capabilities but he could not help feeling that he had been chosen for precisely such a reason. He had taken over a project to replace the current robotic arm on the ISS with a longer, more mobile version and rather than approaching it as if it would be a new model of the existing arm, he threw out the original schematics, the notes and ideas of other minds who had worked on the project, and thought instead about basic and fundamental notions of functionality—motion, power, strength, dexterity, control. He poured himself into the project, the numbers fluid and sleek and beautiful, and when he had a full draft of the whole project he showed it to the main office and within days was presenting it to various members of the NASA staff. They checked his calculations again and again but he already knew he was correct. Over the subsequent year he would work on making the numbers a reality.

Once the arm was complete he would bring it to the ISS. He would install it. He would test it in person aboard the station. That would be his mission. My god. He would at last be going into space. And Barb and Quinn both seemed excited for him this time, Barb even suggesting that they go out to dinner to celebrate and there were days when he felt as if some syzygial moment had come upon him: he was fulfilling his dream, his daughter was happy, his wife loved him. But it was only that span of days, for he was gone again for more work on the robotic arm and when he returned everything had regained its normal silence and distance. Barb wrapped up in her life, Quinn in her own, and these lives separate from his.

Soon after, Barb brought him the brochure featuring the image of a young couple with a blonde child and a red dog with long shining fur, all posed happily on an expanse of green lawn. “The Estates,” the text read. “Your home. Your future. Your family.” He did not know why Barb or anyone else would want to live in a neighborhood comprised
entirely of cul-de-sacs, but when he raised this objection she reminded him that he was going to be gone on his mission for six months and he would be home so seldom between now and departure that his opinion was of little import. “Just let me do this,” she told him, and his response was to nod and tell her, “OK, fine,” and then, “Whatever you want.”

She chose a floor plan and a color scheme and five months later they hired another moving company and everything was boxed up and loaded into a truck and delivered to the new house across town and then everything was unboxed and put away in bedrooms still smelling of plaster and fresh paint. One weekend when he was home Barb dragged him through six or seven different furniture stores, asking his opinions of various sofas and tables and chairs and finally purchasing the sofa he professed to like the least, the gray beast that she had subsequently left behind. There had been an argument, of course, but even then he did not know why he had bothered or why she brought him along to the stores if only to ignore every opinion he offered.

Despite this, he thought in the end that the new house might make Barb happy or if not happy then at least content and that it might even make Quinn happy, the two of them settling into a neighborhood so new that much of it remained empty, streets ending abruptly at dirt lots, sidewalks circling empty spaces where houses had yet to be built. She had wanted a new house and it certainly could not be any newer than this.

His last conversation with Quinn occurred the evening before he was to return to Houston for the launch procedure. He had been home for a few days. When Quinn was home she stayed mostly in her room or passed through the house talking on her mobile phone and so he hardly saw her at all even though she dwelled under the same roof. She had her own life of cheerleading, social gatherings, and high school dances
and did not seem to notice him unless she wanted something from him. And he did not like to admit it but he was afraid too, afraid of her lack of interest in him, afraid of her silences, perhaps afraid of further pushing away whatever connection they had once shared, and it was this fear that continued to concern him even as the months and weeks and days passed and up until there was simply no time remaining. He had decided that he should talk to her about her future just once more before the mission and actually convinced himself that it was worth at least attempting, as if he might shake her resolve just enough for her to consider her future while he was away, and so, the night before he was to leave, when Barb was out at the supermarket, he walked up the stairs in the house that six months later would be empty of everything except for himself and knocked, waiting for her to say, “Come in,” before opening the door.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she answered. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Just stopping by.”

She was silent, looking at him. She was not a girl anymore but a young woman; the skinny gangly child she had once been had faded into some more distant memory and this daughter who looked up at him was a young adult. In his memory she was shining. In his memory she was alive.

He glanced around the room: a white box the walls of which were mostly covered over by music posters. “How’s the new room working out?” he said.

“OK.”

“Did you decide on a color?”

“Not yet.”

“What’s happening?”

“Nothing much.” She waved her mobile phone at him. “Texting.”

“Ah,” he said. “Texting who?”

“Shawn.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s the tall kid?”

“Yeah, he’s the tall kid. I only have one boyfriend.”

“Got it,” he said.

“Don’t be mean,” she said.

“I’m not being mean. Why do you and your mother always think I’m being mean? I’m never being mean.”

“Just don’t be mean.”

It was silent then but for the faint strains of music from the stereo behind her. After a moment he said, “How’s cheerleading?”

“Good.”

“Good game on Friday?”

“Yeah. We did our new pyramid at halftime. Mom said it looked great.”

“I’ll bet it did,” he said. “Did she video it?”

“I think so.”

“Good, I’ll watch it later then.” He stood looking at her and still she did not look back at him. “School?” he said at last.

“Fine,” she said. A pause and then, “How’s work?”

“Hard. We leave tomorrow.”

“I know. Are you excited?”

“Of course.”

“Cool.” A long silence now.

“So,” he said, “I wanted to talk to you about something before tomorrow.”

“Uh-oh.” She looked up at him and then sat up and leaned against the headboard.

“Well, I guess I wanted to know what you had planned. Or if you were thinking about that at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re seventeen.”

“Are you asking me what I want to be when I grow up?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Any idea what college you might want to go to?”

“Probably City. At least for a while.”

He was silent, staring at her.

“What?” she said.

“You can do better than that.”

She did not say anything in response.

“I just want to make sure you’re thinking of your future. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I
am
thinking of the future,” she said.

“City College is not your future.”

“Says who?”

“Look, honey, I want you to do something. At least go to the university.”

“And do what?”

“I don’t know. I figured you’d be a math major or something.”

“I probably will be a math major or something.”

“I just want to make sure you have some kind of goal. That’s all.” She did not respond and after a moment he said, “This is important, Quinn.”

“What’s important?”

“This. All of it. The thing you can do.”

“What thing?”

“You know what I’m talking about. You’re gifted.”

“God, when will you stop about that?”

“When you do something about it. Or if it’s not that then something else.”

“Something else like what?”

It was silent again. He could feel the blood pumping in his body, the thrumming rhythm of it. “I just don’t understand,” he said at last.

“What’s to understand?”

“You,” he said. “I don’t understand you.”

“That’s because you don’t talk to me anymore.”

He stood there, surprised and confused, looking for some response but finding nothing.

“I know you’re busy and I know your astronaut stuff is important,” she said at last, “but you can’t blame me for you not being around. It’s not fair.”

“OK,” he said. “Then tell me what’s going on.”

“There’s nothing going on.”

He exhaled loudly, as if resigned. “That’s my point, Quinn,” he said. “You’re not doing anything.”

“I’m doing plenty,” she said. “I have straight A’s.”

Even in that moment he knew he was telling a half-truth, the calculus of his argument reaching no clear conclusion except the conclusion that had been clear and true for him and which he had decided must also be true for his daughter. This, even though he knew that she was not like him, that she did not need the numbers in the way that he had, the way he still did. He knew that even then. And yet he continued pushing because he also believed that he was right. Her gift, her abilities, were stronger than his own. But she had chosen to be a cheerleader of all things, a cheerleader, a choice that made so little sense to him he could not even begin to work out a response. It was as if the girl he had known and loved—the girl who was not even a girl anymore but who was a young woman—had erased the equation he had made for her, leaving only the variables or not even that, leaving only the aleph and some range of infinities that could not be counted.

And so he said what he would regret for all his days to come: “I’m disappointed,” he told her. “I’m disappointed in you.” His daughter who was a straight-A student, who was brilliant, and popular, and beautiful. Even in that moment, standing in her doorway, he could feel his heart crumbling inside the cage of his chest. And yet he was angry and frustrated and somehow believed that if he said the right combination of words he might turn her back to the course he had envisioned, even though he knew that he could never find the right words, not in this situation nor in any other.

She was quiet for a long time after that and when she spoke again her voice cracked with tears. “You don’t understand,” she said at last.

“I guess I don’t.”

She stood from the bed quickly. “I’m going over to Shawn’s,” she said and when he did not move from the doorway she looked him in the eye and said, “Get out of my way,” and of course he did so.

Those were the last words he would hear from her in person, the last not separated by atmosphere and electricity. She and Barb had come to the launch but he felt it was only because they were obligated to do so. He had seen Quinn one last time: from across a barricade since NASA rules dictated that any school-age children were potential carriers of illness and any kind of close proximity was therefore forbidden. He might have been relieved by this. If so, he now could not will himself to remember. It was late in the evening and she was standing next to her mother in the harsh artificial light. He walked along the road with the others in the crew, a line of men and women in orange launch suits, and she had waved to him and he had waved back. He could not even remember what she had been wearing. Had she called something to him? Had she yelled that she loved him? That she wished him good luck? If so, the words were lost to him. Instead, there was her wave. That was all.