by Lucia Ashta
“That’s nice, sweetheart,” Mom said, sharing her term of endearment for me with my lookalike. “We like you too.” Mom took a sip of her spiked tea and smiled. Who was this woman and where was my worrywart mother?
Dad sat back in his chair and asked, “So what’s the plan?” My dad might ordinarily be more relaxed than Mom, but this man was cool as a cucumber, a smooth operator, a version of my dad I’ve never seen before.
I couldn’t find words in time.
“Well,” Jordan said, “I assume your daughter told you she’s planning on returning to Origins with us.”
Dad and Mom nodded like he was talking about getting together for Sunday dinner.
“Good, well, I’m planning on going too. I haven’t been to Origins yet, but from what they all say, it’s similar enough to Earth that I can be comfortable, and, well, you know what it’s like. When you finally find that person you want to share your life with, you can’t let them go. If I let this woman go without me, then I’ll regret it the rest of my life, and that doesn’t sound fun.”
“That’s wise, son, very wise indeed. When you find the woman for you, hold on tight and don’t let go. That’s what I’ve done, and it’s worked out quite nicely for us, hasn’t it, Marcia?”
“Indeed it has. Jack is right, when you find love, hold onto it. Now that Ilara isn’t a lesbian anymore, I want her to do the same.”
Jordan and the Princess’ heads swiveled in my direction. “Mom!” I said. “I was never a lesbian.”
“I know.” Then she winked at me.
She winked at me. Who was this woman in the guise of my mother? I was flabbergasted into silence. Had my mother been playing me all along? The wild woman acting the prude, conservative housewife? I didn’t understand a thing.
“Where do you go from here?” Dad continued as if my life weren’t crumbling down around me.
Jordan said, “We’re going to go Boston to settle my affairs. Mmm, this is some good scotch.”
“My ma used to say, you should never skimp on two things in life: gifts for your woman or whiskey.”
“Sounds like excellent advice.” Jordan took Ilara’s hand. “It should be pretty simple to deal with my affairs. I don’t have any family to speak of. My dad left when I was a boy, and my mom passed away years ago. I’m an only child and I don’t have any relatives I know of, so that part should be easy.”
“Well you can always count on having a family here,” Mom said to the perfect stranger in our house, the one I said looked like the man I loved from another planet. Life was outrageous.
“Thank you, Marcia, that’s very kind. If I ever return to Earth, I might just take you up on it. You seem like really great folks.”
If I hadn’t been the one to make the most implausible of the pronouncements, I would’ve been searching for a hidden camera. If someone was pranking me, it would explain a lot, and it’d make me feel better about the state of the world I was abandoning.
“The only thing I really leave behind,” Jordan was saying, “is my dojo.”
“Oh you practice martial arts?” Dad asked. “What kind?”
“I am both a student and teacher of karate, judo, aikido, tai chi, and qi gong. I have a pretty solid community of students and friends through the dojo, and I regret having to leave all I’ve worked to build behind.”
“But you have to follow your heart,” Dad added.
“That’s right. This woman has changed everything for me.”
“That’s good, very good, and we can understand why. If she’s anything like our Ilara here, then they’ll never be a dull moment in your life again.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Jordan said, and laughed, sipping at his whiskey.
Mom asked, “Once you settle your affairs, Jordan, you’ll all be off? Taking our Ilara with you?” Finally, Mom sounded affected by the thought of me leaving.
“That’s the idea. We left behind some of our group and they’re preparing what amounts to a space shuttle that will take us all to Origins. We have to hurry too, because there are a few big problems on the planet that we need to address, including that my Ilara here needs to step in to rule while her father, the King, is unconscious. There’s quite a lot of political instability at the moment, from what I understand, and we need to get Ilara back before it gets worse.”
“Wow, that sounds intense,” Mom said, still sounding like somebody else’s mother. “Is your father going to be all right, sweetheart?” she asked Ilara.
“I’m not sure. I’ve been away for several years. My father sent me away when assassins tried to kill me.”
“Oh my goodness.” Mom’s empty hand flew to her chest. “That’s awful. You-poor-thing.”
I did feel bad that assassins tried to kill off the Princess’ family, but calling her you poor thing was definitely a stretch.
“Thank you,” Ilara said, “but the reality is that my father isn’t all that good of a man. Ruling the planet has made him ruthless, even with me.”
“Oh, that’s sad. Jack here would be able to rule a planet without becoming ruthless, wouldn’t you, Jack?”
“I’d like to think so,” Dad said like people proposed the rule of entire planets in our universe to him every day. “It’s taken me a lifetime to get my priorities straight, but I think now that I have, I’d be able to hold tight to them.” With a leprechaun-like smile, he took another sip.
“That’s an interesting thought,” the Princess said.
“Oh no,” I said. “No, no, no. Don’t even suggest that. Don’t even think about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s totally one-hundred-percent-off-the-charts crazy.”
“When has crazy ever stopped you before?” Mom asked.
“The correct answer to that is never,” Dad said happily. “So what’s this idea you’re having that she doesn’t want you to have?” he asked the Princess.
“She’s thinking I’m going to suggest that you come with us to Origins.”
“And are you?”
“Absolutely, I think it’s a fantastic idea.”
It didn’t seem to matter that I absolutely did not think it was a fantastic idea. Everyone in the room was smiling but me.
19
“Oh no, no, no, that is definitely not a good idea,” I said. “Ilara, how can you even suggest it? These are my parents we’re talking about.”
“I realize that, very well in fact, considering that they’re so similar to my parents.”
“They might look like your parents, but they’re definitely not like your parents in any other way.”
“First of all, you’ve never met my parents, and second, from what I can tell, it doesn’t seem as if you know your parents as well as you think you do.”
“She’s got you there,” Mom said joyfully. I was hoping it was the whiskey making her act like this and she’d return to the mother I’d always known.
“Still, Ilara, there’s no way my parents would even consider something like this. I mean, you do realize you’re suggesting that they move to another planet, right?” I laughed but my laughter didn’t sound right even to my ears. “Maybe they’ve managed to hide a bit of a... wild side from me, but it’s a far stretch from there to living on an alien planet.” I could barely believe the words that were coming out of my mouth. They were ludicrous, every single one of them.
“Well, now, honey,” Dad said, “we can appreciate your concern, but there’s no need to go putting words in our mouth.”
“That’s right, Jack,” Mom, the stranger, chimed in.
“What would moving to your planet entail?” Dad asked Ilara.
“Dad, seriously,” I started.
“Let her answer the question, honey, what’s the harm in that?”
Ilara said, “Once we arrive on O, since I’m the princess, I can set up a nice estate just for the two of you. Life there is different, of course, but it’s not all that different.”
“It’s not all that safe, eit
her,” I interjected, even if no one wanted to hear me speaking reason, a rare role for me, for sure.
“It’s not any more dangerous than life is here from what I’ve seen from the news. There are wars and violence everywhere.”
“Yes, but you saw that on the news, that didn’t happen to you in real life, did it?”
“No.”
“While I was on O I saw violence firsthand.”
“Sweetheart,” Mom said, “you didn’t tell us.”
“I’m telling you now. We saw a group of ninja men kidnapping women and children, and then the royal guard was trying to return Tanus to the palace for execution.”
Ilara waved her hand, implying it was nothing. “The thing with Tanus was a misunderstanding that will go away the second I’m back at the palace. As to the kidnappings, let me guess. I know Tanus well enough to know that he probably didn’t let you out of his sight once he found you, which means that he was there when you saw the kidnappings. And if he was there, chances are great that Dolpheus was there too. Since Tanus and Dolpheus happen to be the most formidable soldiers on all of O, I imagine that the two of them quickly dispatched the kidnappers and returned the women and children to safety. Am I right?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean O is safe.”
“No it doesn’t. I don’t believe there are any guarantees in life. But while you have Tanus to protect you, I’d wager you’re safer on O then you are here.”
“Okay, maybe, but that doesn’t extend to my parents, now does it?”
“It could, if you were to marry Tanus.” A peculiar glint appeared in her eyes, and I couldn’t tell what it meant. “If you and Tanus joined, then your parents would become his parents, and he’d protect them with his life.”
“Even so, we can’t depend on Tanus to keep us safe all the time.”
“Why not? I would. It’s what he does, and he does it remarkably well.”
“Yes, that’s true, but—”
“What is it, Ilara, do you not want your parents there for some other reason you’re not saying?”
“No, it’s just that this is a big deal, like a ginormous, huge, gigantic deal. To begin with, the trip over here was awful, we thought we were going to die.”
“But that was because you used Aletox’s broken machine. Now we’ll be traveling back in Yudelle’s perfected transport machine.”
“Maybe that’ll make a difference, but will it make that much of a difference? It’s still outer space travel. Mom, Dad, this is space travel we’re talking about, do you really think you’re even up to considering such a thing? You’re not spring chickens.”
“Speak for yourself, young lady,” Mom said. “I’ll have you know that while we might not be as young as we used to be, we’re still plenty active. Why your father and I have sexual relations multiple times a week and have plenty of fun while we’re at it.”
“Ew, Mom, ewww! Why would you tell me something like that?”
“Because you apparently think your parents have one foot in the grave, and we don’t, plain and simple.”
“What are you grinning at?” I snapped at Jordan.
He put his hands up in surrender. “Nothing, nothing, I’ll stop.”
“Okay, now that you’ve scarred me for life,” I continued, “beyond the space travel, O is really dangerous.”
“You already said that, honey. We heard you, loud and clear,” Dad said.
“Then why don’t you sound dissuaded?”
“Because it’ll take more than a bit of space travel and danger to put me and your mom off from some adventure.”
“You’re kidding, right? You thought that since I’ve caused you so much worry you’d play along with this crazy idea to get back at me for being wild and now telling you I’m leaving the planet?”
“Honey, when have we ever done anything to ‘get back at you?’ You know we’d never do something like that.”
He was right. They hadn’t, they wouldn’t. Shit. “Okay, you’re right, but you can’t seriously be suggesting that you and Mom would even consider something like this?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe we would. What do you think, Marcia?”
“We have been talking about needing more adventure in our lives.”
Beyond having sex several times a week? Ick. I couldn’t wait for the day that thought didn’t pop in my mind. I said, “Then take a cruise to someplace exotic, or scuba dive, or parachute out of a plane. Take tango lessons, I don’t know, do something adventurous that’s normal.”
“Sweetheart,” Mom narrowed her eyes at me, “are you really advising us to be normal, when you don’t have a normal bone in your body?”
“Yes, I am. Doing something adventurous is great, I fully support you in it. Enjoy your old age—”
“Young lady, tread carefully.”
“Do something fun. You’re both retired, I get it, you want to do something different. There are lots of adventurous, different things to do without leaving the planet.”
“But what an adventure it would be,” Dad said. “Right, Marcia, my love?”
“We couldn’t top it. No one at the community center would have a story like ours.”
“Only you wouldn’t be able to share it with them,” I said. “You’d never be coming back. Think about it, you’ve lived in this house for decades. You’d leave all of this behind. Everything you’re comfortable with would be gone, poof, vanished from your life, and if you don’t like it there, too bad. There’s no coming back.”
“But you would be there,” Mom said, “and we’d get to see you, right?”
“Of course I’d see you if you were there”—and this crazy train actually departed the station.
“And I think this other Ilara and Jordan might visit us from time to time too. Wouldn’t you?”
“Of course we would,” Jordan said, “wouldn’t we, Ilara?”
“Sure we would.”
“See,” Mom said.
“I do see, but I don’t understand. I thought you were happy with your life here.”
Dad said, “Just because we’re happy in one place, doesn’t mean we won’t be happy in another. We’ve had a long, satisfying life together. You can’t blame us for considering a bit of wild fun before this life is over, can you?”
I sighed a big, long, heavy sigh that I wanted my parents to hear.
“Can you?” Dad pushed.
“No, I suppose not.”
“If you were in our shoes, you’d be considering it too.”
I didn’t respond. He knew I would be just as I did.
“Would we have to work?” Dad asked Ilara. “How would we support ourselves if we leave my pension and benefits behind?”
“You wouldn’t work,” Ilara said, “I’d afford you a healthy stipend along with living accommodations that I’m sure you’ll be happy with. I’m the princess, I can give you anything I want.”
“In exchange for pretending to be the king?” I asked, a hard edge to my voice. “That would put them in tons of danger.”
“Not necessarily. I’d rule if my father dies, though I won’t deny the possibility of Jack stepping in for my father on occasions is an intriguing idea.”
“Only intriguing to you.”
“Not necessarily,” Dad said. “I’ve never been a king before.” His face was whiskey pink.
“Would that make me a queen?” Mom asked.
“My mother, the queen, is dead, but you never know how things might turn out, right, Ilara?” the Princess said. “Things are often very different than they seem.”
“Well, I’m obviously not going to argue with that,” I grumbled and took a sip of my tea. I looked at Mom and Dad, who looked back at me expectantly. “You’re seriously considering this?”
“I think so,” Mom said, looking thrilled at the prospect of doing something so outrageous.
“And there’s nothing I can say that will talk you out of it?”
“Probably not.”
“The
n I’m going to go up to my room to see if there’s anything I want to take with me. Since you don’t need my opinion, I’ll leave you to make your plans without me.”
And even though I didn’t take long, leaving my old room with no more than my grandmother’s old locket, which I’d filled with a photo of my mom and dad, by the time I returned to the living room, everyone’s cups and glasses were topped off, and Dad’s face was set with determination and enthusiasm.
“Fuck, you’re coming aren’t you?” I said.
“Young lady, language,” Mom said, as she’d said thousands of times before.
But this time, I didn’t bother to care. “You’ve made your final decision?”
“We have,” Mom said, chest puffed out.
“Wow,” I said, scooping up the frame from earlier and slipping out the photo of the three of us to take with me. “Okay then, I’m going to have to do some adjusting to the idea.”
“Why don’t you adjust to the idea while we go take care of my stuff?” Jordan suggested. “We agreed to go to Boston, finalize my affairs, and then return to pick up your parents.”
My eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because you can’t actually expect my parents to wrap up more than half a century of life in a day.”
My Mom got up from the couch, patted my arm, and said, “It’ll be plenty of time, sweetie, you’ll see.”
“But how?”
“Don’t you worry about that,” she said, steering me toward the door.
“But you have a house, cars... stuff.” Everywhere I looked there were family memories and mementos.
“Yes, and in the end, stuff is just stuff. We don’t take anything with us to the afterlife. We don’t get to check in baggage. There’s no harm in lightening the load earlier, now is there?”
I couldn’t tell anymore.
“Now why don’t you go ahead on out to the car so that your dad and I can get busy preparing for our big trip.”
“You say it as if you’re planning a vacation to the shore.”
Mom kissed me on the cheek. “You’ve never lived by anybody else’s rules. Don’t make us do what you wouldn’t.”