Mother left for Earth a month before the Silence.
I remember the night it was decided. Mars was different then: vibrant and thrilling, still riding the crest of expansionist excitement. New Galveston was the first official colony established here, but there were other, older settlements: Dig Town, the collection of wattle-and-daub homes and network of tents that had gathered around the great hole they called the Throat, the principal mining site of the Strange; Brawley’s Crossing, an unofficial settlement of stowaways and explorers that predated our own town by at least a decade; and a spiderweb of smaller towns and villages full of philanthropists, pioneers, hermits, and reprobates—the driftwood of civilization that had been accumulating over the years since Chauncy Peabody’s celebrated landing in 1864.
But New Galveston was the jewel. We represented the first organized effort to build a permanent presence here. We were the ones who benefited from the direct exchange of goods with Earth, we were the town that made all the travel brochures and inspired the dreams of working folks yearning for the opportunities that once lured whole families to the American West. Laborers came in droves to lay ties for a railroad, which we believed would one day be the glory of Mars. Wealthy adventurers came to wander into the deserts, and famous personalities vacationed here, eager to take in the exotic atmosphere of a wild new place.
The last night of my normal life found me with my parents on the outskirts of town, on our way to the local baseball game. A barnstorming team was visiting from Earth, featuring players from the Cuban and Negro Leagues for the first time, and Father had heard that their pitcher could throw harder and faster than any white man who’d ever taken the mound. He did not believe it, and we all headed for the game in curious disbelief. My father was eager to see our own Martian Homesteaders put a dent in this upstart’s fancy reputation, but I was secretly hoping to see a dazzling display of strikeouts.
A train of people made the easy walk to the ballfield, the warmth of the afternoon still riding the breeze, a last lingering comfort before the evening chill settled upon us. The sky was bright, spangled with shades of red, the night still crouched behind the curve of the world. People brought picnic baskets; their Engines walked or rode on treads beside them, including our own Watson, who’d been turned into a pack mule for our sandwiches and our lemonade.
It was Watson that stopped us, rotating his rust-mottled head to observe the Postal Engine racing to catch us.
“I believe we are wanted,” he said.
The Postal Engine hurried along, navigating the furrowed track with ease. It came to a ratcheting halt a respectful distance from us. The train of people parted around it, some of them giving us lingering glances. Standard practice was for people to pick up their own mail at the post office; if the Engine came for you, it usually meant an emergency.
“An urgent message for you, Mrs. Crisp,” it said in its cheery metallic voice.
Although no great calamity had yet befallen me, I felt a sickness in my gut. The Engine’s sprightly tone rang like a funeral bell, inspiring a sudden, peculiar loathing. Its voice appalled me. It was as though its engineers had been so intoxicated with the excitement of Mars that it must have seemed impossible to them that one might ever again receive bad news.
“Let me have it,” Mother said, and the Postal Engine extruded a cylinder from one of its ports, which Mother took. It then pivoted on its treads, its function fulfilled, and trundled homeward. My parents exchanged a glance. With a command word—“bluebonnet”—she shut down Watson’s awareness and ejected his personality cylinder from a port in his head. In its place she inserted the recording cylinder.
Watson hummed for a moment, and then he spoke to us in Aunt Emily’s voice.
“Alice, it’s Mother. She’s suffered another setback. Dr. Spahn gives her six months, at best. Her memory is fading. Some days she doesn’t even know who I am. She calls me by your name. I think you should come, if you want to see her before the end. I’m sorry, I know it’s not easy. But I believe it’s now or never.”
Of course, it was a ridiculous request. The trip home would take two months, and surely there was nothing for Mother to do except to send her condolences and to suffer her loss here, in the comfort of her family’s presence.
But passivity was never Mother’s way.
Father took her into his arms and held her tightly. Her face was clouded, but it did not seem to me that she was on the verge of ruining my life.
We didn’t go to the baseball game. We weren’t there to see Satchel Paige shut out the Homesteaders, setting a strikeout record on Mars that has yet to be broken. How strange that this, of all things, still galls. That I should lie here in my cot, staring up at the fluttering canvas of my tent so many years later, and still feel deprived of having seen something wonderful.
After putting Watson’s cylinder back in place, we returned to our hab in a troubled silence. Although neither of my parents would speak it out loud, I understood then that she really was going to go.
But I didn’t expect her to leave me behind.
When she told me, she might as well have slapped my face. I stood in the doorway to my parents’ room, watching her pack for the long journey: her books, her pretty dresses, her toiletries. The ship to Earth was leaving the next day, just after another arrived, each loaded with passengers and cargo. Three saucers made the regular circuit. The one arriving tomorrow would not head back to Earth for another four months.
What we didn’t know was that the one arriving the next day—the Eurydice—would never leave. And the one that took my mother away—the Orpheus—would never return. This was her last night on Mars. Her last night with me.
“I want to come with you,” I said.
She did not look at me when she said, “You know you can’t.”
“You just don’t want me to.”
I remember standing there, small and angry and hurt. I can see myself as though I were watching someone else. I feel no sympathy for that child, roughly moved by the currents of adult motive, so mysterious and so callous to her needs. I could if it were a different person. I could hold her close and whisper the sweet lies adults tell children. But because it’s me, I feel ashamed of her for treating my mother so coldly.
She looked at me then, finally letting me see the grief she felt. “How can you say such an awful thing?”
“I’m small. I won’t take up too much space.”
She sat on the bed she shared with Father and held her arms out to me. Tears glimmered in her eyes. I went to her, feeling a flare of hope, and she hoisted me onto her lap like a child half my age. I laid my head against her shoulder, feeling the heat of her skin, taking in the clean, wind-scoured scent of her hair. I remember wondering if Earth would change the way she smelled, and it made me afraid. But the fear went away when she held me. I believed she would make the difficult decisions, that she would bear the pain the world portioned out to me, the way parents are meant to do. She would keep me from despair.
But, “You must stay, Anabelle,” she said. “Not because the saucer can’t accommodate you, and not because I don’t want you to come. You must stay because you’re a growing girl and you’re in school, with friends here and a father who needs you. You have to help him mind the diner and you have to continue your studies. In a few years, you’re going to be a grown woman. It’s hard work, and you have to be ready. I’ll be back soon.”
“It’s not soon,” I said, letting myself cry at last. “It’s a long time.”
“You have the recording cylinder I made for you. When you miss me too much, you just take out Watson and put that in instead. I left lots of little messages, for you and your father both. It’ll be just like I’m right here.”
“No, it won’t. It’s not the same.”
I felt her face on the top of my head, her breath warm in my hair.
“I know,” she said finally. “I know.”
I pressed my face into her shoulder, soaking her blouse with my stupid, useless tears. “Why can’t you just stay! She might not even be alive when you get there!”
She smoothed my hair with her hand and pressed her lips against my forehead. “Because she’s my mother,” she said. “I want to say goodbye to her. I’m afraid it might be my only chance, and it would hurt me forever to miss it. The way you love me is exactly the way I love her.”
That made sense to me, of course. But it also defeated me, because the love I felt in that moment was as terrifying and hungry as any starved dog. It left no room for anyone else, not even for my own father. And if it was true that there was no room in my heart for him, then it must also be true that there was no room in hers for me. I understood at last why it was so easy for her to leave me.
“One day,” she said, “you’ll want to say goodbye to me, too.”