Alien Abduction

by Irving Belateche

  “That’s not my problem!” He stormed out of the kitchen, and a few seconds later, the sound of his bedroom door slamming shut rocked the house.

  I felt awful. Why couldn’t I have let him enjoy a few days of validation? Why couldn’t I have let him enjoy the fruits of four years of hard work? Normally, I would have. Wouldn’t I? But things weren’t normal. Proteins were running wild in my blood.

  When Eddie came home and learned about Jake’s acceptance letter, he congratulated him.

  Jake responded with: “You don’t need to pretend. I know you don’t want me to go there. So just leave me the hell alone.”

  *

  My argument with Jake turned out to be mild compared to the one I had with Eddie two days later. I still hadn’t said anything about my blood test, nor about my upcoming internist appointment. Hiding that from Eddie, plus the fact that Jake hadn’t talked to us since getting accepted to Northwestern, made for a tense household.

  “You think Jake is ever going to talk to us again?” Eddie asked me when I walked into the kitchen. He was eating an early dinner of scrambled eggs before heading out to tutoring sessions.

  “Eventually,” I said. “But when he does, it’s not like he’s going to tell us he changed his mind about Northwestern.”

  “I know, but we have to talk to him. He needs to be realistic, whether he likes it or not.”

  “Don’t you think we should wait until he hears from all the schools?”

  “If we cut it too close to the deadline, we’ll have less time to talk it out. And he might not get as much financial aid.”

  “Then why don’t you talk to him?” I wasn’t ready to battle Jake. I had my own problems to deal with. And I was feeling bad for Jake. After all, he was right: we had promised him he could go to the school of his choice.

  “It might go better if you laid the groundwork first,” Eddie said.

  “That’s not going to go well,” I replied, while thinking: It’s your fault we have to renege on our promise. If he’d done a career pivot when I’d told him to, we wouldn’t be in this position.

  “You haven’t given up on finding a real job, have you?” I said.

  “Of course not.”

  “Because if you found one, we might not have to argue with him. He might be able to go to Northwestern.”

  “You know I’ve looked high and low. By the way, it’s not as if UCSD is a bad school. It’s a great school. Look at all the kids who didn’t get in there.”

  Hearing him say that made my anger boil over. “You know Jake worked hard as hell to get into Northwestern.”

  “Of course I know.”

  “But you want him to settle, just like you’ve settled.”

  “I don’t have time to fight about this now,” he said, then stood up and looked at his watch. “I’m going to be late if I don’t scoot. We’ll talk about it later.”

  “When? At eleven, when you get back? That’s a little late for a serious discussion.”

  “Okay, then we’ll talk about it tomorrow.” He started toward the kitchen door. “And I haven’t settled.”

  “Give me a break. You’ve settled on tutoring.”

  “Come on—you know I’m not doing it permanently.”

  “No, you come on, Eddie. Be serious. That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  “I can’t find a goddamn job, so I’m doing what I can.”

  “Really? Tutoring is the best you can do? That’s how you plan to pay the bills—to pay for Hannah and Jake’s college—to pay for medical expenses? Really?”

  “Give me a break—I’m working my butt off!”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think you’re working your butt off!”

  He stared at me, ready to escalate the argument. But then he turned and walked out. I wanted to yell at him to come back and have this out. Now. But I was disgusted with him. He was a loser. That’s right.

  I suddenly felt tears well up in my eyes and then spill down my cheeks.

  Why was I thinking my husband was a loser? Was it because the proteins were running wild in my blood?

  EDDIE

  CHAPTER SIX

  I told Jenny I had lined up an interview for a sales job. One that I had a very good shot at landing. It was with a high-tech company in Playa del Rey that sold software to international business clients. I told her the company was willing to give me a shot because they were looking for older salesmen who engendered a feeling of trust with clients.

  It was ironic that I was talking about trust, because I was lying about the job. Not only was there no interview, there was no such company.

  I lied to buy myself some time. Lying to her was totally out of character for me, and I didn’t feel good about it, so I promised myself I wouldn’t lie to her again.

  Then I did something else out of character. I did something at Ben Kingsley’s house that I wouldn’t have done in a million years if I hadn’t been so desperate to find a job. And if Jenny hadn’t basically told me she thought I was a failure.

  I was ensconced in Ben Kingsley’s McMansion, going through the first draft of a history paper with Mason, when I started to feel the tug of those bricks of cash. This wasn’t a new feeling. Every time I was in the McMansion, that feeling would come over me.

  Weeks had passed since I’d last seen Ben at the house, and tonight was no different. During some of those past weeks, on a few occasions, I had walked down the back hallway to use the bathroom, even though I hadn’t needed to. It was the lure of those bricks of cash that had drawn me.

  While down the hallway, I had discovered that the room with the wall safe was a sparsely furnished office. If this was Ben’s office, it offered no hint of what he did for a living. As for the wall safe, it was hidden behind a beautiful tapestry, a weave of the galaxy, with swirling solar systems, red-orange planets, and golden suns.

  Tonight I once again heard the call of the siren’s song, the one coming from the wall safe. So after I pointed out the three areas in the history paper that I wanted Mason to focus on, I once more succumbed to its lure.

  I excused myself to go to the bathroom.

  But this time, instead of perusing the office from the hallway, as had been my custom, I stood on the threshold of the room for only two or three seconds before I—and I don’t know if I’d planned this all along or not—rushed into the office and over to the tapestry.

  I knew this was a crazy move—that Mason might catch me, or Ben, if he was home, or Mason’s mom, Diane, for she was definitely home. She had answered the door when I arrived, and sometimes she’d peek into our tutoring sessions and ask if we wanted a drink or a snack. She could easily check in on the tutoring session, then decide to head a little farther down the hall and find me snooping.

  I considered shutting the office door, but decided that might look suspicious. And it would take a few precious seconds; whatever I was going to do, I had to do it quickly.

  I lifted the tapestry and saw the wall safe right where I remembered it.

  Now what?

  I wasn’t sure. I stared at the safe. Judging by its sleek design, I could see that, like everything else in the house, it was top of the line. But I wasn’t trying to figure out how I could crack it. No. That wasn’t it at all.

  I was standing there because it was my way of accepting the truth: my only goal in life right now was to find the source of the cash inside this safe. I would do everything within my power to find it, no matter what it took. My family’s life, their happiness and security, depended on this—

  I heard something and quickly lowered the tapestry. Then I realized it was my heart thumping madly in my chest.

  I hurried out of the bedroom, down the hallway, and into the bathroom. My body was shaking. I was fearful. But after closing the bathroom door behind me, and taking a few deep breaths, I realized that I felt more than fear. I felt energized.

  I now had a mission.

  I had hope.

  JENNY

  CHAPTER SEVEN />
  Without telling Eddie, I went to the internist for my appointment. I put the charge on the Discover card, but I didn’t feel as guilty about it this time. Eddie was on the verge of landing a job in Playa del Rey, and from what he’d said about it, though we wouldn’t be rolling in the money, it would put us back on the road to financial stability.

  The internist turned out to be compassionate and direct. He didn’t deal in vague answers like my general practitioner had.

  “I wish I could say that the odds are with you,” he said, after carefully explaining the battery of tests I’d be undergoing. “But the truth is we might be in for some bad news. I want you to be prepared.”

  “I think I am.” I gave him a feeble smile.

  “Good—because there’s a high likelihood that we’ll find something. But I also want you to understand that just because we find something, it doesn’t mean it’ll be life-threatening. Patients tend to think that a tumor means a serious illness—incurable.”

  “You can count me in that column.”

  “There are a lot of patients in that column. But we’ve come a long way with treatments. Let’s get the diagnosis and we’ll go from there. I can assure you, there will be plenty of options, all with great outcomes.”

  I still couldn’t help but think of cancer as a death sentence.

  *

  I spent the next few days gritting my teeth, unable to focus while I waited for the test results. I also decided that, at this point, I would just wait until I got those test results before I said anything to Eddie and the kids.

  And when the day came to take the MRI, I told Eddie that I had an interview for a job as a prop master on a Netflix TV pilot.

  He wished me luck.

  Two days later, the internist’s office called to schedule an appointment. The doctor wanted to go through the results with me in person.

  It was time to tell Eddie.

  I wanted him with me when the doctor ran through my treatment options. And I was sure that this was what the doctor was going to do—right after he told me the bad news.

  That evening, after I’d gotten the call to schedule the appointment, Eddie was at a tutoring session nearby. After that session, he was planning to come home to grab a bite to eat before heading out for two more sessions. Hannah was at swim practice, and Jake was at Sam’s house, so this was a good opportunity to tell Eddie.

  The only downside was that he’d just come off a terrible argument with Jake about college. Jake had gotten into both Berkeley and Columbia, and though no college was looking affordable right now, we’d been pressuring him to choose Berkeley. It was in no way inexpensive, but at least it was less expensive than Columbia and Northwestern.

  The most logical choice was Lehigh, a small school in Pennsylvania, one of Jake’s safety schools. Lehigh had awarded him a substantial financial aid package.

  Jake refused to even consider the school. And Eddie not only wanted him to consider it, he wanted him to go there. Period.

  They’d had another argument about it this afternoon. It had been so loud and so full of “fuck you”s from Jake that I’d gone into the bedroom and put a pillow over my ears. In the end, Jake had stood his ground, and Eddie had marched into our bedroom, fuming.

  “The belligerent bastard wants to major in economics,” he said, “but he doesn’t understand a fucking thing about the reality of paying for college.”

  “He’ll come around,” I said, though I knew Jake well enough to know he wouldn’t.

  “Deposits are due in two weeks,” Eddie shot back.

  “We’ll put down a deposit for Northwestern and Berkeley, and for Lehigh, and we won’t tell him.”

  “More money flushed down the toilet.” Eddie sat down on the bed, the fight suddenly gone out of him. “And then what? How do we get him to go to Lehigh?”

  “We bully him until he understands that it’s the only school we can afford.”

  “I could use your help.”

  “I’ll talk to him again,” I said, though it would be a futile conversation. Then, hoping that there might be some good news on the horizon, I asked, “Have you heard anything about the job in Playa del Rey?”

  “No—not yet. They’re dragging their feet.” He slumped, and didn’t say anything more.

  “You think they might have hired someone else?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.” He shook his head, exasperated.

  That had pretty much been the end of the conversation. Eddie had then taken off to go to the early tutoring session. But it was the image of him sitting on the edge of our bed, slumped over, desperate, that had stuck with me. It had stayed in my mind for the rest of the afternoon, and it was still there when he came home for a bite to eat.

  So I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about the doctor’s appointment, even though I wanted him there with me. Instead, I made him a burger, with cheese and avocado and onions, just the way he liked it.

  “Thanks, honey,” he said, when I brought it over to the table.

  “No problem,” I responded—though there were a ton of problems.

  *

  The internist told me I had pancreatic cancer. And that was the good news. The bad news was that it was at an advanced stage, and my options were limited. But what exactly those options were, I couldn’t say, because once I’d heard the diagnosis, I couldn’t focus on much of what the doctor said afterward.

  I found myself wondering why the world around me suddenly looked fake. When I’d walked into the doctor’s office, the doctor had looked like a real human being, made of flesh and bone. Now he appeared to be an android, spouting off words he was programmed to say, and most of those words sounded like gibberish. Sure, I heard emotion in his voice, reflecting the gravity of my situation, but I wasn’t fooled.

  I was the only human in the room.

  The office had also changed. When I’d walked in, it had looked inviting and comfortable, decorated in warm beige tones. Now it looked like a cheap set from a low-budget infomercial, like the one I’d worked on in Ventura four years ago. I was sitting in a God-awful replica of a medical office.

  “Do you have any questions?” the android asked.

  “No.” I just wanted to get out of the robot’s line of sight.

  But I couldn’t. I was trapped in this fake world.

  A few of the things the android said did make it through to me, even though I was focused on escaping this facade of an office: surgery was too risky, unless they could shrink the tumor; aggressive treatment might prolong my life, but it was risky and expensive, and the outcome was uncertain; my life expectancy was two years.

  I stared at the android’s eyes—steely blue, beautifully lifelike, but not made well enough to fool me. I could tell they were cut glass.

  “I know this is a lot to take in right now,” the android said. “But this isn’t the last consultation. We should talk again next week, after you’ve had some time to digest this.” His computer-generated voice was a million times better than Siri—better than any I’d ever heard—but I could still tell it was synthesized.

  “Are you going to be okay, Mrs. Hart?” the android asked, feigning concern.

  I nodded. I had to get out of here.

  “It’s okay to tell me if you’re not feeling okay,” he continued. “I can give you something for that.”

  I stared at his skin. Like his voice, it was synthetic.

  The android shifted in his seat, then said, “Why don’t we schedule another appointment? After you’ve had some time to process.”

  “Okay.”

  *

  On the way home, I tried to force myself to stop my irrational thinking. It was tough. Everything I drove past looked fake. Painted, wooden facades of buildings, plastic life-size cars, and badly made props of all types.

  I tried to ignore the phony world around me because I wanted to recall exactly what the doctor had said. I had to get that straight before talking to Eddie.

  By the time I pulled
up to the house, I had managed to remember the basics. Pancreatic cancer, advanced, not many options, but with aggressive treatment—expensive treatment—I might live for… How long had the doctor said?

  Two years. Was that right?

  I entered the house and stood there, motionless. I knew where to find Eddie: in the den, feet up on the coffee table, computer on his lap. He was probably reading newspapers online. He was still a news junkie, though he was no longer part of the profession. Why did he harbor hopes of getting back in the game? Couldn’t he see that the herd had been thinned?

  Of course he sees that, and it’s killing him.

  And what I have to tell him now will kill him even more.

  I stepped into the den, and he looked up from his laptop.

  I felt bad. For him.

  “It’s tough, isn’t it?” I said.

  “What’s tough?”

  “Changing careers. Getting kicked to the curb. After so many years.”

  “It is…” He smiled, and I could see he appreciated my words. He was a good man whose career had imploded through no fault of his own.

  “When is your first tutoring session today?” I asked.

  “I’ve got an early one today. Two-thirty.”

  “You want me to make you some lunch?”

  “Sure—thanks.”

  But I didn’t turn to head out of the room. Again, I found myself standing there, motionless. A morbid picture had formed in my head. It was my funeral, and Jake was staring at my casket. He was devastated and lost. I was heartbroken. How could I abandon my son?

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Eddie said.

  I tried to rally—that’s what I was going to have to do from here on in. Wasn’t it? I’d have to find a way to give my family strength. The strength they’d need to carry on without me. That would be my goal before I died.

  But how?

  I felt warmth around the edges of my eyes, and then the tears began to flow. Down my cheeks they fell. I quickly wiped them away.