Dr. Marcum was the last person into the conference room for our weekly meeting. He sat down, put his fingers across his mouth, and assumed a thoughtful frown. “By now, you’ve all doubtless heard,” Dr. Levitt began. “The higher ups want us to lie, if necessary, to keep Crimsy’s discovery a secret.”
“Bloody prats,” Marcum said. “The way they’re going, the only humane thing to do will be to cut Crimsy loose. Return her from whence she came.”
“It is discouraging,” Shonstein said.
“I have asked and asked and asked, until I’m blue in the face, why the big secret, what the hell is going on,” Dr. Levitt said. “I may as well be emailing a black hole.”
“We need a Nobel laureate,” Dr. Shonstein said. “Someone with enough gravitas to appear before Congress and the UN and the media and blow this puppy wide open without getting tried for treason.”
“Why are we obligated to keep our mouths shut?” Brando said.
“If not treason charges, then our jobs?” Shonstein said.
“There are laws that protect whistle blowers,” Dr. Cooper said. “Going public would be like whistle blowing.”
“Like whistle blowing?” Marcum said. “It would be whistle blowing.”
I looked at Dr. Levitt. She sighed. “Going public may be the only way,” she said. “The deadlock only seems to be getting more rigid.”
“Too bad Wikileaks folded,” Cooper said.
“We have anything like that anymore?” Brando asked. “Global watchdog, central repository for stuff The Man doesn’t want out?”
“Ten thousand clogs that run ten thousand stories a day,” Marcum said. “But all is lost in such cacophony.”
“What we need is singularity,” Shonstein said. “One voice to rise above the noise.”
Mom and I ate an early dinner with a view of Elliot Bay. The seafood in Seattle was a shock to me at first; I was used to walleye and blue gill and other freshwater lake fish. I thought mom would experience same shock, but instead she made a meal out of oceanic appetizers—oysters on the half shell, mussels, clams, calamari, wild salmon—exclaiming her passion with each different species.
“I’m in heaven, Jennifer,” she said. “The only thing missing is Lake Mish.”
“You miss Mish already?” I said.
“That’s a saltwater bay,” she said, staring out the window. “I’m a freshwater girl.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” I said. “Especially when my straightforward Midwestern nature rubs someone here the wrong way.”
“Has it done that?” she said.
“Oh yeah.”
She looked at me questioningly.
“Like the other day. Some of our investors dropped in—”
“Investors?” she asked.
“People who put money up for the mission.”
“I thought NASA did all that,” mom said.
“Still too broke after the US debt crash. We had to get private money. And international money. Other countries invested, too.”
“How do they make money?”
I hadn’t thought about that, and I said so. Our investments sounded more like donations to mom, but then she wondered if there wasn’t some hidden prize, like the toys in the old Cracker Jack boxes.
“How can you make money with a germ from Mars?” she said. “Unless they know something you don’t.” She looked at the bay. “Is there oil on Mars?”
“There’s life, so there may have been.”
“Maybe that’s it. Buried treasure.”
“By the way, David says hi and wants me to reassure him you’re doing okay.”
“I’m doing great,” she said, pausing. “I won’t lie—I didn’t think I’d ever recover. But I have, or at least, I’m well on the way.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you never recovered.”
“Ron thinks I won’t,” she said. “He thinks it’s time to call in the cavalry.”
“Sounds drastic—and dramatic.”
“He doesn’t like it when I forget things.”
“The business is going great,” I said. “And you run it.”
“Thanks for noticing,” she said. “But I have a lot of help. Great staff. Brandon my new office manager is going gangbusters.”
“So you can take some time for yourself. Maybe see a doctor,” I suggested. “Just for a routine check up.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Colonoscopy. Mammogram. Blood pressure. Blood sugar.” It was a good idea, regardless.
“I’m the picture of health,” mom said.
“On the outside.”
She smiled. “I’ll think about it.”
I let that idea settle, then pushed a little harder.
“We’ve got great doctors in Kenosha,” I said. “They’re not all pill pushers.”
“I’ll think about it,” she reiterated.
“Promise?”
She nodded.
The check appeared, a glowing memorandum of our evening, hovering hologram-style in the Cloud on the table next to my wrist. I touched it with my wrist for a chip scan. The check glowed red. Touched it again. Red again.
“Hmm. Payment declined.”
“You using Ethereum or Bitcoin?” mom asked.
“Both and more,” I said. “Sign on the door says they take all blockchain currencies.”
“Let me try. Check, please.”
The virtual check appeared next to mom. She touched it with her wrist. Green.
“What are you using?”
“Still with bitcoin,” she said. “You need a few bits?”
“Get paid Friday,” I said. “I’ll check my account when we get home.”
“This lobby is spectacular,” mom said, as we walked into The Mallory from our dinner date. “They’ve done a wonderful job restoring it.”
I went for the elevator, but mom insisted on taking the stairs.
“And your place is adorbs,” she said with a deep breath, taking in my apartment again. I closed the door as she walked to the front window and looked at the night.
“It’s a little tight, but I love living here.” I paused as something occurred to me. “So mom—how come we’re getting along?”
She didn’t say anything and didn’t turn around.
“I’ve been thinking about that since we started talking again,” I said.
Just stared out the window.
“We haven’t fought, haven’t even argued.”
“Maybe it’s because,” she began.
“Because what?”
“I can’t say. It’ll sound corny. I hate corny.”
“I’m cool with corny,” I said.
She looked at her feet.
“C’mon. Out with it.”
“Oh good God. Maybe it’s because...we’re falling in love,” she said. She turned to me. “Again. We’re not the same people we were, the first time.”
I wasn’t sure I heard that right. “Mom,” I stammered. I tried to walk to her, but faltered and caught myself on the back of a chair. “What?”
“Falling in love, all over again. That doesn’t mean I haven’t always loved you, with all my heart. It’s just...Corny, right?” she said.
“Sweetest corn I’ve ever tasted.” I glowed. I felt it on my face, in my head.
“You mind if I turn in?” she said. “I didn’t think I’d be this tired on day five.”
“Jet-lag lag,” I said. “Be right behind you. Got some reading first.”
She took my double-sized hide-a-bed and I went for the fancy air mattress I placed next to my slender galley kitchen. I read for a while, but gave it up. I couldn’t stop thinking about what she said. I had wondered if we would ever get past the fight last summer, a couple months after Brian’s funeral. David thought it was over between mom and me the winter before, after we retreated into our respective corners when I got in Ron’s face about being a callous prick about Brian’s then-failing second rehab stint. BridgeWaters wasn’t acknowledging its collapse—Ron was right. But I didn’t want to hear how right Ron was again. And mom didn’t want to hear me arguing with her overly-protective brother. It was adolescence all over again and it was my fault. I should have kept my mouth shut, learned some tact (as David advised). But I charged ahead and damaged us, again.
Now, mom and I were falling in love. With each other. Again. I fell asleep with that sweet on my pillow.
I awakened in the wee hours with a feeling of light on my face. It took my brain and eyes a second to adjust, but when they did I saw my front door open to the hallway. I raised up and looked around. Door must not have latched completely, though I thought I remembered locking it. I went to close it. I looked at my bed. I couldn’t make mom out, so I moved closer.
“Mom?”
I tossed the sheets and blanket. No mom. Two twenty-seven AM. Don’t panic, I thought, but still I felt my heart creeping into my throat. I threw on some pants and a flannel shirt that belonged to dad and some slip-on leather boots and a light jacket and went into the hallway.
“Mom?” I whispered. I hurried to the elevator, scanned the lobby, rushed outside, to the dying traffic on Fifteenth Avenue. Should I call David? Not yet. It was probably fine. The nights here this time of year were tender and easy. She probably just went for a walk, more me time, and the door didn’t latch. I walked up and down my side of the street, around the corner to Forty Fifth, down and across and back and forth, then back to Fifteenth, where I crossed to the side opposite The Mallory, and ran past the Burke Museum, then beyond it to Parrington Lawn, a park-like part of the UW campus, letting the street lights guide my eyes beneath the trees. I went up four more blocks, then turned and started back. I turned onto the bike path into Parrington Lawn. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.” I felt my legs cold and shaky, felt the light leave my eyes, saw through the fog. I had to keep it together. “Nine,” I gasped. “Nine One One.”
“What’s your emergency?” said a voice from the Cloud.
“My mother...Mom!” I yelled as loud as I could and ran, to a figure lying against a tree in a nightgown. “Oh my god! My god!” I took off my jacket and brought it around her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Mom. Are you all right? Are you okay?”
“We have you at Parrington Lawn, on Fifteenth,” the operator said.
“Mom!”
“Jennifer?”
“We’re sending a first responder drone now.”
Mom grasped my hand strongly. I could tell she wanted to get up.
“Cancel it. Cancel it. I’m okay,” I said. “We’re okay.”
“Are you sure, ma’am?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure.”
“I’ll still send the drone, but it won’t descend. Is there a reason you’re in the park?”
“My...a relative. I’m taking her home. Just up the street.”
“Okay. I’ll have the drone follow you until you’re safe.”
“Thank you,” I said.
My mom looked at me. “A drone? What good will that do?” She said it so earnestly, globally, and knowingly, her question sounded rhetorical.
“It’s a precaution, ma’am,” the operator said. It was like she was standing next to me.
I helped my mother to her feet and we walked back to my apartment. She remembered to put on slippers, otherwise I would have carried her.
We walked into the lobby and stood. I looked at her, picked leaf and grass from her hair and nightgown. An old but brilliant grandfather clock began its chiming ritual. Gong, gong, gong, it concluded.
Thank you, thank you, I said to myself. The scientist, talking to her God.