Family of Origin

by CJ Hauser

  ——————·

  Elsa heard Nolan’s breaths grow even. She felt like she was coming down from a fever.

  She got up and retrieved the two waterproof books from where she had thrown them. Choosing the field journal, Elsa leafed through pages of her father’s handwriting. Before he’d become a Reversalist, Ian had worked in some of the best-outfitted labs and universities in the country, with teams of interns and grad students and million-dollar software at his disposal. That his work could now be contained in two slick Rite in the Rain journals was pathetic.

  PERSONAL FIELD JOURNAL OF DR. IAN GREY

  Duck Number Twelve is significantly smaller than its brothers and sisters, and yet, its wings are much longer. They are awkwardly long, and when extended, appear unwieldy, as if flight would be a burden and not a freedom. Duck Twelve’s bill is perforated with not one but three sets of holes, one set at the typical spot, close to the beak’s origin, and the other two farther down the beak. The purpose for these holes is unknown. The duck has uncommonly wide feet, which enable it to swim not faster, but in greater bursts of power, so the effect of this specimen is one of undecided motivation but great conviction.

  Whether Duck Twelve is a freak among its peers, an anomaly, or represents an indicator of a coming evolutionary advancement is unclear at this stage. He may simply be an aberration. But I confess I suspect his physiognomy and perceptive profile will endure at least another generation.

  There is not a scientific way to categorize the difference between the way in which Duck Twelve lives its life compared to the other undowny buffleheads, but I hope that through observational notes, the differences will become clear. I have begun to think of Duck Twelve as the Paradise Duck, a name born of its seeming joie de vivre. I know a duck cannot be happy but I think the Paradise Duck might be. Might, in fact, be demonstrably “happier” than its peers. I cannot, as yet, determine why this might be. The Paradise Duck has, as best I can tell, no partner, no offspring, and no role of any significance within the group dynamics of its clutch. And yet, it seems to take more joy in the daily mechanics of living.

  It broke Elsa’s heart to see Ian write like this. All “Dear Diary, today I saw…” He sounded like the crazy Florida birders they used to mock on vacations to Sanibel Island.

  Ian taught Elsa to have nothing but disdain for the birders’ personal quests for Big Years. At the hotel breakfast, they’d see old people at neighboring tables checking off roseate spoonbills and bertuffled sharpshinners in their guidebooks, which they pored over while picking at yogurt and fruit. To Elsa, it seemed the birders were so empty of life they needed to catalogue the living things they’d spotted: beautiful or ugly winged creatures who couldn’t care less about being seen. Be the bird, Elsa thought. Be the bird, not the crazy old lady watching it.

  And now here was her father, journaling about a duck he had named. It was everything he had once loathed. Joie de vivre. Jesus Christ.

  Elsa was about to put the journal away when she had a thought. A stupid one, but she could not resist. She flipped to the last page of the journal and skimmed the final entry. It was from the day before her father died.

  It was about Duck Number Twelve, the Paradise Duck. He had observed it splashing gleefully in a hidden inlet where the other ducks did not go. “Playing alone!” he wrote, and mentioned that he had successfully taken blood samples from the duck earlier in the day and sent them to a lab in Louisiana. That was it.

  Elsa shut the notebook and clicked off the lantern. She got into the bed. Nolan was radiating heat beside her and the blanket did not feel right.

  Had she hoped for some kind of clue? Dear Diary, today I watched some ducks then decided to off myself?

  She’d spent so much time hating Ian, but at least she’d hated him because he was so large, so great. Elsa had always thought she might manage to become something like Ian. When she’d applied to Mars Origins, she’d been banking on the fact that they would see the Ian-ness in her. But what did that mean now? The man in these notebooks, in the Reversalists’ stories, was sentimental and idiotic.

  They would never pick her. They were looking for explorers and adventurers, brave and brilliant souls.

  The night birds were calling. In the bed, Nolan was asleep, his hair looped back in a bun. She raked her fingers along his skull, pulling his hair free, and it spilled across the pillow.

  Park Rapids

  ONE YEAR BACK

  Elsa was squeezing limes, and Ingrid was washing the blender. The screen door to the lakehouse was open, and they were making margaritas to celebrate the end of Elsa’s school year. Her mother was still wearing turquoise scrubs from her nursing shift, and she chewed on ice as she washed the dust from the blender, which had not been used since the last time they’d been in a celebrating mood, a time Elsa certainly couldn’t remember.

  There must have been something we celebrated, Ingrid said.

  If you can’t remember, it didn’t happen, Elsa said.

  I don’t think that’s true at all, said Ingrid.

  The limes Elsa was squeezing stung her cuticles in a ringing kind of way.

  They make juice, Elsa said. It comes in plastic bottles. Shaped like limes.

  That’s not the same. Ingrid crunched her ice. This is real.

  The juicer was made of milky green glass, and wrinkled fetus-y seeds floated inside. Elsa split one between her teeth. Sour. The rubber watch Elsa wore was ticking quietly.

  I’m thinking of going to Mars, Elsa said.

  A staccato laugh from Ingrid, because Elsa was always saying things to bother her mother on purpose.

  Me too, Ingrid said.

  Really, though. There’s this program. For people to go.

  Like tourists? Ingrid said. Sounds expensive.

  No, for good.

  What’s for good?

  Like, forever.

  Forever?

  Well, until you die.

  But that’s absurd, her mother said. Why would they want someone like you in space?

  Thanks a lot, Mama.

  I’m totally serious. Don’t you need to have an awful lot of training to do something like that?

  They don’t want to waste people with training. The idea is to be colonists. If you make it. And for them to test the effects of the trip. On our bodies. To gain information.

  Elsa, frankly, if you were going to kill yourself, I’d think you’d have the good sense to jump off a cliff or take pills or whatever people do, and not bring the whole US space community into it.

  I don’t want to die, Mama.

  Well, that’s what it sounds like. Giving up and killing yourself in a way that pretends to be heroic. She clicked the clean blender into its hub.

  It’s the opposite of giving up, Elsa said. This planet’s not going to last forever. And if we don’t settle Mars someday soon, we’ll never be ready in time.

  In time for what?

  In time for people to colonize it, to continue the human race, when the Earth is over.

  Earth is over?

  When we can’t live here anymore.

  You’re being an alarmist.

  What about global warming and the hole in the ozone layer? What about the oil crisis? What about all those storms and disasters getting worse? I don’t understand why people always call you an alarmist when you’re pointing a finger at something that is genuinely fucking alarming right next to you.

  Well, I refuse to believe anyone would let that happen. We have a lot of smart minds in this country. Someone will figure something out.

  Like who? Like Dad?

  Frankly, I think that if the Earth were burning before his eyes, your father would sit there and fan the flames, Ingrid said. She pulsed the blender. That was always his way.

  Ingrid wiped her hands on the apron. This was the closest to a negati
ve thing Elsa had ever heard her mother say about Ian. Not when he left. Not when he got remarried. Not when Elsa and Nolan got in trouble and he reacted so badly. Not ever.

  Like Dad’s some kind of nihilist? Elsa asked.

  No, Ingrid said. Not like that. He’s just so interested in what might happen, what it could look like, that he makes it so without thinking about the outcomes. And then later, when the thing is done, he makes that face, like, Hey, how did I get here?

  Did you like that about him? Elsa said.

  I liked everything about him, Ingrid said.

  Elsa sighed.

  So you think everything’s going to be just fine. A-okay, Elsa said. You’re not worried at all for the generations to come?

  Are any generations to-coming? Ingrid said. It doesn’t look like it. How is Dylan, by the way?

  He’s fine, Elsa said. And he was. He was better than fine. He was the only reason Elsa could imagine for staying on Earth and not floating away to Mars at all. Ingrid, on the other hand, did not need her. Elsa knew her mother loved her, but if Elsa left, Ingrid would be sad for just the right amount of time, and then she would grieve in some very healthy manner, and then she would be returned to the bloom of health and high spirits.

  Her mother tipped the bottle of tequila into the blender. She took the lime juice from Elsa and poured it down the blender spout.

  She said, Unless you can promise me there will be future generations to care about, I find the concept terribly abstract. Ingrid ran the blender.

  * * *

  ——————·

  They drank their margaritas sitting on the back patio, staring at the lake.

  Cheers, Ingrid said.

  The margarita was sour and chemical and sweet too. It had that medicinal tequila taste that always made Elsa feel better as soon as she’d sniffed it.

  How can you just give up on the planet like that? Ingrid said, patting her thigh.

  You say give up like there’s something I could do to fix it.

  There’s always something to do.

  But Elsa could not believe in her mother’s cheerful insistence that everything would turn out sunny. Elsa truly believed that, when she looked at every blooming thing on Earth, she was seeing it for the last time. That this generation was the last to have the privilege of seeing its green planet in an uncomplicated way. She thought of her students, seven and eight, and how much they would hate her when they got old and realized how fucked everything was and how little she had done to stop it. How little any of them had done. Her generation. Grown-ups, she supposed they were grown-ups now. Their parents were still alive, but they were old and so all of this could no longer be their fault. It was hers now.

  The kids in Elsa’s classes had been brought into this world under auspices of ignorance, in the hope that things would go well, in the face of all the evidence that it would not.

  Sorry, babies, Elsa thought, like a mantra, all day while she was teaching them spelling words or watching them on the playground or siphoning Elmer’s glue into wax Dixie cups so pompoms could be attached to the construction paper hats for snowmen. Sorry, babies, sorry, babies. Sorry we couldn’t do better. Sorry no one planned ahead. The only thing Elsa could think to do to help was to go to Mars. Surely there were better people to go; she knew this. But Elsa was not good at sitting back and watching other people do things.

  Her mother slipped out of her shoes. Rubber flats with nubby insides. Her toes were painted a pale metallic coral.

  Tell me about something good, Ingrid said.

  This was always what her mother said. Ingrid shut her eyes and lay her head back on the chaise. She held her margarita in one hand and the other she tucked snugly into the marsupial front of her apron pocket.

  This margarita is very good, Elsa said. She stuck her tongue out so part of the salty rim came away.

  No margaritas on Mars, I bet, her mother said. I bet Martians live their lives stone-cold sober.

  * * *

  ——————·

  Dylan picked her up. In his truck, the windows down, Elsa pleasantly buzzed, they drove down straightaways, through fields that were warm in the evening light and smelled toasted and rich like hay. She reached over and rubbed the crotch of his jeans with the palm of her hand. He kept one hand on the wheel. With the other, he took her hand in his and held it tucked into his own fist.

  Holding hands instead. That’s what things were like with Dylan. He understood that sometimes when Elsa thought she wanted sex, what she really wanted was something else much smaller. He knew that she was afraid to ask for small things like this because the need in them did not seem big enough to draw attention. That she was afraid her small needs would go unnoticed, and so she made plays at bigger ones instead.

  Dylan was wonderful in bed. Squeezing every part of her like he was taking inventory. Really and truly fucking her sometimes, and then lingering and waiting and stroking patiently other times, and Elsa never knew which Dylan she was going to get and that was what Elsa liked. Because Elsa was never so bored as when she felt she could predict exactly what someone would do and when. Mostly Elsa always thought she could predict what people would do, because Elsa was very smart—not brilliant like her father, but smarter than it was good for a person to be. The kind of smart than ran interference on happiness.

  But maybe Elsa was not as smart as she thought she was, or she would have realized that sometimes you know what people are going to do because that’s just how people are. Good people, anyway, are creatures of habit and dependable wants, which you needed to be in love, because otherwise, you found yourself short on synchronization points.

  And Elsa wanted but did not want to be in love. The word love made Elsa feel nauseated, like everything was so common and commoditized and trampled on that there was nothing new or good in the world at all. Except for maybe the things that were not good. Things that were bad, but freshly and surprisingly so, having been spared people trying to define them or make them their own. And so these were the things that were left to Elsa.

  They drove on, and in the fields the hay had been baled in whorls and the bales sat like quiet giants. Dylan released her hand, and Elsa drew her legs up in the seat and hugged them to her.

  Would you want to go to Mars? she asked him. Really. If you could.

  Probably not, Dylan said.

  Why? Elsa asked.

  I don’t imagine you can move around much out there. I think I’d feel all cooped up in a rocket. Not enough space.

  All there is, is space, in space, Elsa said.

  But you couldn’t get to it, Dylan said. That would make me even crazier. There’s no place you can go on your own two legs.

  You’d be better than legs, Elsa said. You’d be floating. Forget legs.

  Forget these legs? Dylan smacked her flank a few times. Never.

  What if I were going to Mars? Elsa said.

  If you were on Mars, Dylan said, I guess I’d have to consider a visit.

  Leap’s Island

  They did not wake until after noon. Still lying on her back, Elsa smelled her armpits.

  I smell like pineapple vodka.

  Maybe drink less, Nolan said.

  I’m on summer vacation! Elsa stood up quickly. This is how I spent my summer vacation.

  When does school start up?

  Maybe never, Elsa said. I might not go back.

  Really? Nolan said. What would you do instead?

  Elsa unzipped the side pouch of her bag and took out the letter from Mars Origins. She passed it to Nolan.

  She had her first in-person interview with the Mars Origins people in one month. She’d already booked her ticket to Amersfoort in the Netherlands. If Elsa advanced to the next round, she’d be one of the Mars 100 who would get tested in training situations in simulated settlements. She would get hers
elf together by then. She wouldn’t smell so much like vodka. She would work out and look like the kind of strong but compact person you’d want to share a spaceship with. She would teach herself a little farming. A little code. A little Russian, just in case. She’d make an amazing mixtape of songs to play in space. Mix for Mars: David Bowie, Elton John, Misfits, Rob Zombie (Ian would suggest Langgaard). By the time she went to the Netherlands, she would be the sort of person the selection committee would see and think: a woman like that should never be left behind.

  Oh my God, are these those colonization people? Nolan asked. I heard about this.

  Mars Origins, she said. I have an interview.

  You’re not serious, Nolan said.

  I mean, there are two more rounds before it’s final, Elsa said. But if they pick me, training will start next fall, so I won’t be able to teach.

  Training? Elsa, this is ridiculous. He flapped the envelope against his palm. You’re fucking with me right now, aren’t you?

  When are they expecting you back at the park? Elsa asked. Isn’t it peak season?

  They’re not. Seriously, Elsa, you don’t really believe in this, do you?

  What do you mean, they’re not?

  They said if I left now they’d fire me, so I quit.

  Elsa stared at him. The calico curtains were flapping into the room so that light flashed across the floor in hot intervals.

  Nolan, she said. They must have some sort of policy for deaths in the family. They wouldn’t give you any time off at all?

  I didn’t ask.

  You didn’t tell them he was dead?

  Nolan shook his head. There was something about naming Ian’s death—in the ballpark, of all places—that had struck him as impossible. It was a place where Nolan could remember Ian, in his jaunty ball cap, as uncomplicated and enthusiastic, boy-like, almost an equal, and to invite death into the bleachers would spoil that one good thing.

  They told me I should work remotely, he said, but there’s no internet, so—