The Infinite Tides

by Christian Kiefer

  Part III

  Ten

  The screen read “Barb—mobile.” He tilted forward, the chair legs all returning to the floor with a single loud clack. He had been reading an article off his laptop screen and now he held the phone in his hand while it continued to buzz and vibrate, thinking that he would let the call go to voice mail, but then also knowing that if he did so she would only call him again. Like Peter’s apology, it was not something he could avoid and so he answered—“Hello”—and the voice at the other end was shrill and loud: “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said.

  “About what?”

  “That’s not your bank account; that’s our bank account!”

  “What?”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” she said. “How am I going to pay my bills?”

  “What bills are those?” he said.

  “Credit cards. Food. Gas. It’s not like life got free.”

  He did not answer, looked instead at the blank wall before him, the strip of blue masking tape there. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “What was your plan?”

  “What do you mean ‘plan’?”

  “I mean plan. What are you asking me here, Barb?”

  “I’m not calling to play games. That’s our shared bank account and you can’t just close it. I write checks from there.”

  “Why don’t you open a new account in Atlanta?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Your point is … what then?” he asked.

  “My point is that it’s a shared account.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “How do I figure? It’s a shared account. It’s our money not your money.”

  “Did you put that money there?”

  “Don’t play that game.”

  “I’m not playing any game,” he said. He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips and stood.

  “Yes, you are. Don’t play stupid. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Do I?” He moved to the sink and then to the cabinet. The tape there had been pulled off and reattached so many times that it no longer stuck at all, the blue strip dangling limply from the darkly stained wood. He opened the cabinet door and retrieved one of the chipped glasses.

  “Yes, you do. I was raising our daughter. That’s how it works. You can’t just close the bank accounts.”

  He filled the glass with tap water and then sat back down. “Why not?” he said.

  “Why are you playing this game?”

  “I’m not playing any kind of game,” he said. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “Really? You don’t understand what I’m saying? It’s a shared account.”

  “It was a shared account.”

  “It’s still a shared account.”

  “I don’t see how it could be,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “You said you filed for divorce.”

  “So?”

  “So why would we share a bank account if we’re getting a divorce?”

  “It’s called alimony, Keith.”

  “Alimony?” he said.

  “Yes, alimony. I spent the last seventeen years raising Quinn while you were trying to become an astronaut. I have no job skills. We get divorced and you pay alimony. That’s how it works.”

  “You had an affair. You filed for divorce. That’s what happened.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  She began to yell now and he held the phone away from his face and looked at it. Her voice a shrill, tiny chirping through the miles of line. Like an insect. Then he simply closed the phone and set it on the counter where it almost immediately began to vibrate again—four, five times—and when it stopped he flipped it open quickly and pressed the power button until it cycled into darkness.

  The room suddenly seemed very quiet. Before him rested his laptop and the newspaper. He knew he had been dreading the guilt but he did not feel guilty now, in fact felt nothing at all, just a sense of quiet and calm that relieved him. At some point he would likely need to turn his phone back on but then again why should he? Who would need to call him? His work? His ex-wife? Who else? His parents long since dead and his daughter gone into the ground and what friends he had were work friends and hence not people he saw or associated much with outside of the office and now that he was in a kind of exile they were even less likely to call. Jennifer did not have his phone number, not that she would have called. She had not so much as looked at him since she had kicked him out of her home three days ago, her postcoital eviction still a source of irritating confusion. He had waved to her the previous morning as he came in from his morning run and Nicole had waved back but Jennifer simply stepped into her car and closed the door. Things end as soon as they begin.

  Who else would call him? The real estate agent. There were people he might have wanted to talk to from NASA—Eriksson, Mort Stevens, Petra Gutierrez—but only Eriksson had ever called him. A short list consisting of a null set, then. Simple math, indeed.

  There was a stack of unpaid bills on the kitchen counter—an unwanted surprise when he finally had decided to check the mailbox—and he flipped through them until he found the phone bill and he turned on his mobile again and dialed, paying them with his credit card and then requesting his mobile number be changed. The task was complete in ten minutes. Then he closed the phone and powered it down and returned to the silence of the house. He knew Barb would get his new number eventually but at least there would be some respite.

  The local newspaper had begun arriving on his doorstep a week before, apparently part of some kind of subscription promotion, and he had gathered the five or six editions that had appeared next to the rental car. Now he searched for today’s paper and when he located it amidst the others on the counter he unrolled it and rested his hands on the newsprint. The headlines always the same. The entire country falling into some kind of economic disaster he did not even understand or care about and yet which was in evidence all around him every day. Even the news a kind of algorithmic loop. He tried to focus on the lead story but the conversation with Barb had rattled him more than he would admit and the words drifted across the page so that he eventually found himself staring not at the newsprint but at the leather sofa that rested between himself and the empty corner of the room like some aquatic beast that had wriggled huge and needy from the ocean and then had expired at long last in the center of the living room. The goddamn sofa. Maybe he could sell it. Or maybe he should push it out to the curved end of the cul-de-sac and light the whole thing on fire. This idea had the most appeal. The fire department would likely come and perhaps the police would fine him but at least the sofa would be gone.

  After a time he rose and walked outside without any clear idea of his intent, although he hoped to see Peter standing with the telescope in the field. The sun had long since dropped below the horizon and the night was cool and already there were the first tentative sounds of crickets. What time was it? He did not even know, his entire day a periodic and ever-repeating motion between sofa and chair. Two points and the line that connected them.

  He walked to the edge of the cul-de-sac and stepped off into the dirt and into the field, following the path a bit awkwardly at first, the thistle brushing against his thighs and producing thin, scraping sounds as he moved. When he reached the cleared area he stopped. The crickets directly around him had ceased their chirping but far away, across the field, a tiny army of them emitted their overlapping collection of sounds like a long, grainy single note that would continue until morning. The thistle glowed softly and there, far above, the stripe of the Milky Way and stars arrayed in all directions.

  He did not know how long he stood there. Perhaps a long while. Perhaps only a moment. At the edges of the lot he could still hear the wide band of yellow sound that was the endless night’s call of the crickets. Beyond that, on a slight rise, a series of identical glowing cubes
that he knew were windows from the next subdivision. From the field he could see a faint glow from the upstairs windows of Jennifer’s house, as if lit from some interior room deep within. The rest of the house remained a black shape.

  Farther down the street, a short, squat figure appeared from Riverside and moved into the cul-de-sac with an outsize bundle strung up over his shoulder. It could only be Peter with his telescope and Keith found himself wondering if he wanted to be caught there in the field as if waiting for him. Indeed it might have been that he was waiting, not for any reason other than the desire to have a simple conversation with someone, itself a surprising idea since even before the emptiness of the house he had long enjoyed the silence of being alone.

  Peter crossed under the last streetlamp and stepped over the chain. Keith could hear the crunch of dry thistle. “Peter,” he said.

  Peter froze. “Who is it?” he said.

  “Keith Corcoran.”

  “Ah!” Peter said. “Astronaut Keith Corcoran. You surprise me.” He stepped forward again and Keith waited as the crunching footsteps continued and then they were shaking hands in the darkness. “You are outside enjoying night air, yes?”

  “I am,” Keith said.

  “Not with pretty neighbor?”

  “No.”

  “These things happen.”

  “Seems so.”

  “Good then.” They were silent and then Peter dropped the telescope from his shoulder. “You hold this and I set up tripod,” he said, and he handed Keith the telescope itself, a metal cylinder that was cold and smooth in his hands. “You have maybe something else to do?”

  “Well,” Keith began, paused, and then stopped altogether. “No,” he said at last. “Not really.”

  “Good,” Peter said.

  Keith stood holding the telescope dumbly as Peter flipped levers and turned knobs and the tripod unreeled itself from its more compact form and then Peter took the telescope from him and set it upon the tripod, the whole of it like an insect perched there in the darkness.

  Peter unfolded a sheet of paper from his pocket and then produced a small flashlight that cast a red glow upon the sheet. He stood smoothing and looking at it for a long moment.

  Keith stood in the silence, trying not to watch him but wondering what else to look at. The stars. The luminous night. His eyes had adjusted and now he could see shapes in the faint moonglow. Beyond the edge of the cul-de-sac, four streetlights traced where the court formed a T against Riverside. That short distance seemed to mark another world entirely.

  “I have this list,” Peter said at last. “It is nothing. A list that someone made. Things to see.”

  “OK,” Keith said. It was silent again and then he said, “Things like what?”

  “Not stars. Well, yes, some stars also. Mostly odd things. Things that they did not really know about then. When list was made.”

  Keith stood looking at the telescope. “I don’t really know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “A man, Messier, made this list long ago of things he thought were not stars, so I go through this list and find them.”

  “OK,” Keith said. “Sounds good.”

  “No, this is stupid thing.”

  “Oh,” Keith said. “Well, OK.”

  “There is nothing of challenge. Like swimming laps in pool. Like exercise. But what else to do here?”

  “I don’t know,” Keith said. “Can’t see the comet?”

  “Funny,” Peter said. “Comet is on other side.”

  “Too bad.”

  “In Kiev maybe but not here.”

  “That might have been interesting,” Keith said.

  “Yes, I think so. You want to look?”

  “At what?”

  “I don’t know yet. I can find something.”

  “OK.”

  Peter looked up at the sky. “Sometimes I just feel like nothing,” he said. “I just stand and smoke and try not to think.”

  Keith followed his gaze. Then he said, “I guess that’s the same thing I’m doing out here.”

  “Yes. You too, then.”

  Keith was silent. He kicked absently at the dirt with the toe of his shoe. Then he said, “I saw a big bird come up out of this field the first day I was here.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, maybe an eagle or something. It was huge.”

  “How much huge?”

  “I don’t know. Big. I don’t know what it was. I wondered if there was something out here it was eating.”

  “Eating?”

  “You know. Like a dead cat or something.”

  “Oh,” Peter said. “No, I do not think anything was here. I would have smelled some dead cat, maybe.”

  Keith was silent again. Then he said, “We could use some chairs.”

  “Ah yes. I bring chair most times. Not this time, though.”

  Peter went to the telescope and adjusted and readjusted it. He was silent as he did so, his hands deftly working the various dials and knobs, a few times making brief groans and sounds to indicate that the telescope was not quite working as he expected or wanted it to. When Keith had seen it on the passenger seat of Peter’s car, it looked like something destined for the trash heap: a battered white tube pieced together with duct tape. Now, though, it was an instrument being utilized by someone who clearly knew how to wield it. After a few minutes, Peter stepped back as if surveying his work. “This telescope is hard to keep steady,” he said. For a long while he did not say anything more. Then his voice returned: “I thought about what you said last time,” he said. “About my work that is problem to be solved.”

  Keith had mostly forgotten the conversation but he nodded anyway.

  “I think maybe you are right about this,” Peter said.

  “Maybe.”

  “I will be trying to find better job, I think. Something that’s more what I want to do. Maybe Luda does not want to move.”

  “You’d have to find that out.”

  “I think so.” He adjusted the telescope again. “It’s a big good house for us. We have some money saved from Luda’s family and then this house is foreclosure so we have money for it. How you say … timing is everything.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Keith said. “I’ll probably never get my money back on mine. We bought at the height of the market or something.”

  Peter did not speak for a long moment. Then he said, “You tell me good thing to do, I think.”

  “Well, if it helped I’m glad. I’m not really someone who gives advice.”

  “It did help. Very much.” A pause. Then he said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Thanks,” Keith said. He was mildly embarrassed by Peter’s honesty but then there was a sense of gratitude as well. At least someone was glad he was somewhere.

  “Maybe you tell me something of space mission?” Peter said then.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’m trying not to think about that stuff so much.”

  “But this I would like to hear.”

  Keith looked at the ground. In the darkness the dry thistle seemed to glow, spindly and white, like a field of tiny bones. “Well,” he said. Just that.

  “Maybe you tell me about first walk into space?”

  Silence for a long moment. Crickets continuing their endless sine wave.

  “OK,” Keith said at last. “The first one was to install the new robotic arm. It was to replace the previous model, but the other arm was already removed and had been taken back to Earth on one of the shuttle missions before us.”

  “Yes, but when you go outside what is this like?”

  “Like?” He thought for a moment, his mind stammering. He might have stopped then but instead he said, “It’s like falling without moving.”

  Peter was quiet. Keith expected him to ask for elaboration but he did not do so and after a few seconds Keith said, “I don’t know if that’s right.”

  “No, I think that is right,” Peter said.

  Keith looked at him
, his dark form there in the night. “In math it’s the normal vector, the line from your position to Earth. But it’s like there is no normal vector when you’re actually there. So you’re moving forward, falling forward, along the path of the ISS, but it doesn’t feel like you’re moving except that Earth is spinning below you. So you’re falling but it’s not like you’re afraid because it’s also like you’re not really falling.”

  “Yes,” Peter said. “Like falling without falling. And you are in suit with falling.”

  “Yeah, falling without falling. In the space suit. EMU, we call it. It weighs close to two hundred pounds in Earth’s gravity.”

  “Heavy.”

  “Very heavy.”

  It was silent for a long moment, neither of them speaking, Keith wondering what he could say that would somehow describe the sensation of being in orbit. The depth of stars. The depth of the universe itself.

  “And Earth you see below?” Peter said.

  “Yes, down the normal vector. That’s down there and it looks like it’s moving fast and you’re still because there’s nothing that feels like forward motion. So it’s like there’s a tangent vector but it’s an illusion. There is no tangent vector. Earth is down there and it’s moving and you can see everything there is to see. It’s all super clear even through the atmosphere. The clouds and the continents. You can see everything.”

  “Cities?”

  “Yes, cities too. Especially at night when you can see the lights.”

  “That is interesting to me,” Peter said, pausing, and then adding: “You are lucky man to do this work.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Not lucky maybe,” Peter said, pausing, and then adding: “Good enough. Good enough to do that work.”

  Keith said nothing now.

  Peter rummaged in a pocket and brought out something that Keith could not see in the darkness. “Do you mind?” he said.

  “Do I mind what?”

  “I have something to smoke.”

  “That’s fine,” Keith said.

  Peter worked at something small and after a minute there was the light of a flame and Keith could see Peter’s face illuminated, a small pipe in his hand. A moment later, the sweet scent of marijuana smoke filtered through the air to him. Keith smiled. “You’re out here smoking pot?” he said.