We were on the Fauntleroy ferry crossing Puget Sound toward Vashon Island, aka Vashon-Maury Island, one of a few water-locked parcels near Seattle and one of few nearby places I had yet to explore. We planned some antique and Americana hunting—mom and I shared a fondness for crystal door knobs, tin ceilings, and vintage footwear—and Lexi had been with us off and on for the better part of two days.
“What does this remind you of?” mom asked me, watching the water pass along the hull. I hadn’t a clue. “You always got really excited.”
“AP Calculus with Mrs. Ronaldo?” I said half-facetiously.
“Think road trip across the ocean.”
“The Badger,” I said. “It’s a ferry back home,” I told Lexi.
“You guys crossed the ocean in a ferry?” Lexi asked.
“A ferry that looks like a cruise ship,” mom said.
“When we were little, my brothers and I thought Lake Michigan was the ocean,” I said. “You can’t see across it.”
“You can’t see across a lake?” Lexi asked.
“Not that lake,” mom said. “Hundred eighteen miles wide. On a good day, you can see maybe two to three miles.”
“I have got to see this lake,” Lexi said.
Lexi’s mother called to “check on her.” Probably twenty years Melissa Brando’s senior, mom handled this latest inquiry with grandmotherly aplomb.
“I have to compliment you,” she said, during their first voice-to-voice encounter as we waited in the vehicle line at the Vashon-Maury dock.
“Is this Jennifer’s mother?”
“Yes. And one mother to another, Lexi is just the most polite and charming young woman.”
I gave Lexi a thumbs up.
“Why—thank you,” Mrs. Brando said. “Parenting isn’t easy, as you know. It’s always nice to hear when we’re doing it right.”
“We’re delighted to have Lexi as our tour guide today,” mom said. “We’ll be sure to have her back at the appointed time.”
“Very good, mother,” I said after they concluded.
“She’s been generous with Lexi’s time,” mom said. “She could have objected.”
“I begged and pleaded,” Lexi said.
The car drove us toward downtown Vashon.
“The number of persons driving under the influence, also known as driving while intoxicated, has declined precipitously in recent years. A discussion with automobile and law enforcement experts on the impact of self-driving cars, next on NPR.”
“Radio off,” mom said. “I just want to enjoy the drive.”
Dad got his first OWI (Operating While Intoxicated, Wisconsin’s DWI moniker) a few years before we bought our first self-driving car. He got his second OWI—the one that landed him in rehab after our scattered pleas became a concentrated “intervention”—a few months before Dan August Motors went one hundred percent self-drive, rolling out models from Ford, GM, Tesla, Toyida and TeloTrans in an unorthodox bid to see which brand would stick. My father would have gotten a third OWI if my mother hadn’t convinced him to spring for a new TeloTrans Selfie, the self-driving economy model Leon Telos, the guy behind SpaceTek, made through a different subsidiary. “The Bard” as we nicknamed the car, barred dad from his favorite bars. Per the terms of his last OWI sentence, we had the car programmed not to come within two miles of any bar or liquor store in any American city. And he wasn’t allowed to drive Manny Tranny the pickup.
“If a man wants to drink, he’s gonna drink,” dad said once, and so the Bard brought him home one night after a bender somewhere. Brian saw the lights go out just as we got a text the car had safely returned. After dad didn’t come into the house, Brian and I looked out the window. The Bard was dark. Not even a lit cigarette. I followed him out. We peered through the windows. Dad’s head was back against the seat rest, his mouth agape.
“Passenger side open,” Brian said. The door opened and he leaned in.
“Dad,” he said. “Dad.” He gently shook our snoring father. “Go around to the driver’s side,” he told me.
“Driver’s side open,” I said. The door opened and I stood, looking at my father. I leaned in and spoke in his ear and smelled booze on his breath.
“Dad,” I said.
“I feel like dragging his sorry ass out of there,” Brian said.
“Mom doesn’t need that,” I said.
“What about what we need?”
“We need calm. Isn’t that what the counselor said?”
“Right,” he said. “Fuck it.” He turned back toward the house.
“Passenger door close,” I said. I ran into the house to get a blanket. The Fall night was chilly. I wondered where dad had gone to drink. I leaned into the driver’s side. Despite the cool air, he was still out. I tucked the blanket around him. I took his hand in mind, rubbed it, and kissed his cheek. “Solar battery heat,” I said. “Driver door close.”
I heard Dad brushing his teeth with an electric toothbrush in the wee hours of the following morn. I got out of bed and walked down the hallway. I appeared at the door of the master bath, where he tossed back some mouthwash in the pajama pants he sometimes wore to bed. He doused his face and chest with cologne. He jumped when he saw me. “You’re up late,” he said.
“Heard you come home,” I said.
“Thanks for the blanket.”
“It was either that or drag you out of the car.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Guess I got carried away.”
After the millionth “sorry,” what was I supposed to say?
“Did you tell your mother?”
“Didn’t have to,” I said.
He walked toward me and kissed my head. I grabbed him and put my arms around his bare back and rested my head against his chest. He hugged me. I heard his heart beating, like when I was a girl falling asleep against him on the couch. We stood together for what seemed like a long time. When I said goodnight, it felt more like goodbye.
“I got quite a scare this morning after you went to work,” mom said on the phone.
“What? Are you okay?” I was in the post-doc office prepping for Project Little Green Women’s nitrogen decision.
“So I’m stepping out of the shower.” Her voice lightened. “And I hear this loud thud. I grabbed a towel, my comb, and ran into your main room. A drone was hovering over a package it apparently dropped inside your door.”
“Shit—sorry mom. It’s supposed to ring first. And set the package down gently.”
“I didn’t hear any ring. This package is pretty heavy, too.”
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
“Why did you grab a comb?”
“Handy sharp end.”
“What’s in the package?”
“Don’t know,” she said. “Want me to open it?”
“Shake it first. Make sure nothing rattles.”
I heard her unwrapping it.
“It’s a big pile of papers. No—make that a huge pile of papers.”
“What kind of papers?” I asked.
“I’m reading. Bunch of it’s folded, legal size. Oh—here’s a note. ‘I know you probably don’t think so, but I’m a man of my word.’ Doesn’t say who wrote it.”
It didn’t have to.
“I’ll see you for lunch,” I said. “You’re not going out, right?”
“No. Don’t worry.”
I walked down the hallway to Dr. Levitt’s office and stopped short when I heard her voice and Captain Gillory from the space station. I rapped lightly.
“Jennifer. Good morning.”
“Morning.”
“We were just talking about our next vicarious research project,” Dr. Levitt said. I liked that: vicarious research, the perfect oxymoron.
“We’re ready if you guys are,” Gillory said. “We’ll have to hook our nitrogen tanks up to the hyperbaric oxygen chamber to make another containment box, but Commander Ryong assures me it won’t be a problem.”
The hyperbaric oxygen chamber was on board DSG to treat conditions or emergencies like the bends, a life-threatening condition deep-sea divers get that might also result from a compromised space walk. All kinds of bad, bend-like maladies—and tragedies—could theoretically result in the oxygen-free vacuum of deep space.
“They’ll only vary the nitrogen levels in the chamber,” Levitt said. “The OpenGro box will be our control.”
“That should make Shonstein happy,” Hightower said from the background. “Shouldn’t impact the original colony at all.”
“Rebecca understands all that,” Levitt said. “She’s just feeling the stress. We all are.”
“Tell her—” Gillory said. But a loud scream, or a yell, or some kind of resounding exclamation in our building cut her off.
“What was that?” Levitt said.
“I heard it,” Gillory said.
I went into the hall. Dr. Cooper was outside his office. He shrugged. I went from door to door, peering in. Shonstein gone. Brando gone. Marcum’s door was cracked open. I knocked.
“My apologies,” he said. I opened the door. “I’m sitting here rather chuffed at the moment,” he said. He turned from his cloud monitor. “I won,” he said. “I bloody well won.”
William Marcum, DPhil, FRS, NAS had made history: one of a few mathematicians ever to win both the Fields Medal and the Abel Prize, and the only black mathematician to win either award. Everyone was chuckling and shaking hands as we settled in for our faculty meeting, where a congratulatory bouquet from the UW math department took center stage at our conference table. A card that said “Congratulations!” in over-sized lettering from different branches of math—geometry, algebra, group theory, tensor calculus, all-purpose Greek—peaked over the flowers.
Marcum and Levitt hugged. “Bill. We are so, so proud of you,” I overheard her say.
Dr. Shonstein was teary eyed. “I just—” she said as they hugged. “This is so awesome. Bill—I’m just.” She waved her hand in front of her face. “I’m verklempt.”
“Always love it when a brother’s killin’ it,” Dr. Cooper said.
“Thank you,” Marcum said to the collective. “I’m entirely too happy, being part of this team and sharing this now.”
“Ahh,” Dr. Levitt said.
Dr. Brando dashed out, then returned with a box of Kleenex.
“Don’t encourage us,” Levitt said, grabbing one and dabbing her dry eyes. “So as we now formally acknowledge, congratulations are due to our very own William Marcum, winner of the Abel Prize in Mathematics for his work on...Bill, would you do the honors?”
“Ricci-Hamilton Flow Solutions to the Navier-Stokes Existence and Smoothness Problem, or for the biologists in my midst, how living things like Crimsococcus move, and how we might track them in turbulent terrains,” Marcum said.
“Your citation better say all that,” Cooper said.
“Of course,” Marcum said. “We mathematicians are practical to a fault.” Everyone laughed. “I make a motion we move along to more important topics, and I thank everyone, from the bottom of my heart, for your wonderful support.”
“Motion seconded,” Dr. Levitt said. “Congratulations again, Bill.” She paused. “You all have the hyperbaric chamber plan we’ve devised to see what’s making Crimsy turn green.”
“I see you want to use bleach to disinfect the chamber,” Shonstein said. “It’s not the preferred method…”
“No choice. It has acrylic components,” Brando said. We had to disinfect the chamber before putting Crimsy in it to remove any cross-contaminants. Turns out acrylic reacts badly with other disinfectants like alcohol. Who knew?
“I dunno,” Shonstein said.
“Don’t know what?”
“Bleach lingers. It could kill Crimsococcus.”
“Bex,” Brando said. “We’ve been over this how many times?”
“Sorry, Mike. This feels really Jerry-rigged. A hyperbaric chamber, for Chrissake?”
“I think it’s pretty clever,” Cooper said.
“Thank you,” Brando said.
“It’s transparent, portable,” Cooper said. “They can put it near windows, wherever sunlight comes in. Sounds like it’ll be free of cross-contamination. Not a bad place for an artificial climate.”
“What other option do we have?” Marcum said.
“Fuck,” Shonstein said. Then louder. “Fuck!”
“Rebecca,” Levitt said.
“Here we go again,” Brando said.
“Don’t you see how this is playing into their hands?” Shonstein said. “We do all these experiments, get all these projects done, and what happens to our argument that we have to have Crimsy on Earth, in our labs, to do meaningful studies?”
“Our argument?” Brando said. “I didn’t think we had anyone to argue with, except each other.”
“Just wait til we get hauled in front of Congress again, to justify how we basically wasted a few billion tax dollars, fucking around in the weeds,” Shonstein said. “Since when have any of us ever settled for seat-of-your-pants science?”
“Since a few weeks ago,” Brando said.
“I regret that,” she replied. “There’s a part of me that feels like boycotting this entire charade. Going on strike. You hear that, Big Brother,” she said to the Cloud.
“Stop being so dramatic,” Brando said.
“How’s this for dramatic?” She pushed away from the table. “I quit.”
“You don’t mean that,” Marcum said.
“Yeah, Bill.” She stood up. “I do.” She grabbed her note pad and went for the door.
“Rebecca,” Levitt said. But she was gone.
I was pensive after work, but other than stress-eating Beecher’s Curds—a luxuriant local cheese snack I bought for mom—I tried not to let it show.
“I have got to get a video of this,” mom said, as we watched two guys throwing a fish back and forth across a counter at Pike Place Market.
“There’s no Cloud access here. You’ll have to use your cell,” I said.
“No Cloud?”
I pointed to one of the signs popping up around town. “No Cloud Allowed,” aka Big Brother barred from these premises. Technology that blocked Cloud access was making the rounds. Years ago, just the opposite happened when every cafe, bar, restaurant, and people nook advertised Wi-Fi. But Wi-Fi wasn’t as intrusive nor as ubiquitous as the Cloud it morphed into.
“Good excuse to drop my cloudcam subscription,” mom said. She took out her cell, ordered me to stand near the flying fish, and started filming. “Say hello to the folks back home.”
“Hello Keno!” I said.
“Step right up! Step right up,” one of the fish-creants behind the counter announced. “In this corner, halibut.” He raised a fish in his left hand. “In this corner, salmon.” Right hand went up with a different fish. Mom filmed the dual-species duel, as each fish flew back and forth across the counter. They almost dropped the salmon a couple times; the halibut seemed easier to catch. Assured the fish were never dropped and that both men always wore gloves, mom intervened and had the sal-ibut combo cleaned, cut, and wrapped. We sat down to eat lunch on an outdoor bench and I told her about the Shonstein drama. She was sanguine.
“She’ll get over it,” mom said. “Didn’t you guys have someone else threaten to quit?”
Not threaten to quit. But Dr. Cooper did get pretty pissed during the Great Dust Storm Dust Up.