In the Beginning: Mars Origin I Series Book I

by Abby L. Vandiver

  I was close now. Two streets away from home. A right turn, then a left. My street. My house. Should I turn? Should I keep going straight?

  I didn’t want to take this man right to my house, to my children. I turned right. It was just a reflex.

  Oh no.

  My heart fluttered in my chest, such an uneasy feeling. Beating faster and faster, my falling tears kept pace. I shouldn’t have turned. Why did I turn?

  Maybe I wouldn’t make the next turn. The turn onto my street. I could keep going. Drive to the police station. It was only three blocks over. Tell them I was scared.

  I heard thunder rumble somewhere over my left shoulder. And then it got dark.

  I slowly turned around.

  He wasn’t there.

  He hadn’t made that last turn.

  Oh. My. God.

  I was shaking so badly, I pulled the car over and put it in park. I put my hands at the top of the steering wheel and laid my head on my hands and sobbed – pitifully. What was wrong with me? I slapped the steering wheel with the palm of my hand. Had I gotten this paranoid staying in my room trying to translate that manuscript? Had it really taken such a hold on my mind that now I was imagining that people were out after me? Out to kill me? And all because of those manuscripts? I had to get a grip.

  The rain smashed into the car, hitting the windshield heavy and hard. I rolled up the window as lightning crackled through the sky. I put the car in gear and drove down the street to my house.

  My hands were still shaking by the time I got in the house. I went in hugged and kissed my kids, gave them the pizza and went straight upstairs to bed. I pulled the covers up over my head and cried. What in the world was I doing to myself?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The rain didn’t let up for at least another week. But I still couldn’t shake those feelings of doom I had, and I couldn’t shake that incident from the pizza parlor.

  Mase said that I was losing touch with reality by staying locked up translating that “thing.” He was sure, he fussed, that was the reason for “The Pizza Fiasco,” as he called it.

  I didn’t like him giving a name to my near, if not spurious, scrape with death. His reasoning, I fussed right back, was definitely flawed as he only made fun because he was just trying to pass the blame onto me so I wouldn’t be mad at him anymore for not being home.

  That also brought a chuckle. “Because,” he said, “No,” not his fault, but mine for “being obsessed over those things.” And, he wouldn’t let it rest. He wanted me to understand how loony those manuscripts, that I didn’t even have, he emphasized, were making me.

  Of course, I didn’t agree with that.

  So what I didn’t have the manuscripts?

  But I knew, not even deep down, but right on the surface of my consciousness, he was right.

  I decided not to work on the translations anymore – well, for a while. My warped sensibilities needed time to heal. Which wasn’t easy. I had to actually concentrate on not concentrating on them. I mean, all the words were right there seared into my brain.

  But after a couple of weeks I started to feel better.

  I decided that perhaps, no one was trying to kill me and maybe it wasn’t ever a cover-up or a mystery. That dumb Dr. Yeoman just did a bad thing in hiding them from everyone. Sure they were important, but, I thought, maybe it’s not big enough to let it have such a big effect on me.

  And without using all my energy to translate the manuscripts I suddenly could do other things like housework, go grocery shopping, laundry and even work on the tour.

  If Dr. Margulies knew how I was obsessing and letting it get in the way of this tour - ‘his baby,’ as he called it, there would be no end to his chastising. And I couldn’t stand for him to be upset with me. Just the thought of disappointing him made my chest hurt. I had to get it together.

  The Friday after Halloween, I got up early and tried to get some laundry done before leaving for work. It was about eight thirty and I was in the basement putting the last load in the dryer when the phone rang. It was Ghazi.

  I didn’t remember giving him my home phone number. Then I found out Claire was on the line, too. I laughed to myself, what were those two up to? Claire talking to this man on the other side of the world early in the morning.

  It didn’t take long for me to find out why they were calling. Ghazi told me that Dr. Margulies had had a heart attack and died.

  Just like that. I couldn’t believe it.

  I had run up from the basement to answer the phone and grabbed the wall phone in the kitchen. The phone cord didn’t reach over to a chair so I just slid down the wall and sat on the floor. Tears flooded my eyes. I opened my mouth to breath but it seemed as if the air couldn’t get past the lump in my throat.

  “How do you know?” He was so far away. How did he find out before me and I was right here in the city? I opened my mouth, trying to suck in some air. My nose was running, saliva running out the sides of my mouth.

  Dr. Margulies had just called me yesterday and left a message on my voice mail at work to say that he wanted to talk to me. I hadn’t had the chance to call him back.

  “I can’t believe he’s dead,” I said.

  “I’ll be right over,” Claire’s voice came through the phone.

  Ghazi told me that Dr. Margulies had actually been on the phone with him when he had the heart attack. He started to gasp and then got quiet. Ghazi said he hung up and called back to his office and had his assistant check on him.

  I let the phone drop and crawled across the kitchen and got under the table. And that’s where Claire found me. She crawled under there with me and put my head in her lap.

  “Shh. Shh,” she said over and over. I wept and I screamed until my voice was hoarse.

  “C’mon,” Claire said after a while, and guided me out from under the table. She stood up and reached down for me. I crawled out to her. I could barely get up.

  “We have to take care of a few things first,” she pulled me up, “and then, we’ll get you upstairs.”

  She went over and got the phone. I sat on the floor next to it. One by one she made calls. First she called Mase who had left on a road trip that morning. Then my office to let them know I wouldn’t be in. Then Sophie, Dr. Margulies’ daughter to give our condolences and then his wife. I don’t know what I told her or if she understood anything I said because I sobbed through that entire call.

  Claire went to the sink and got a glass of water, she reached in her pocket and handed me a pill and gave me the glass. I looked up at her and took what she handed me. She sat down on the floor next to me.

  “When that valium starts to work, we’ll put you to bed.”

  I took the little blue pill and downed all the water and handed the glass to Claire.

  Groggy, puffy eyed, and face still smeared with tears that refused to subside, she led me to my bedroom. I got in the bed with all my clothes on and she covered me up. She crawled in across the bottom of my bed. I was so glad she was there. I so didn’t want to be by myself.

  Sleep came fast. The dull ache in my chest eased up as I drifted off.

  But at some point the Valium wore off and I peeled open my eyelids. I glanced over at the clock. It was half past three. I had slept all morning. The shades were drawn and only a muted light came through them. I felt thick-headed and woozy. My chest was aching again. My mouth was dry.

  I remembered. Dr. Margulies was dead.

  I pulled up and rested on my elbows. There was Claire, sleep, at the foot of my bed. Mase was asleep in the chair.

  It wasn’t a dream. It was real. I sunk back down in my pillow, curled up into a ball and started to cry again. I rocked back and forth, sobbing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath.

  This must have been the reason for that bad feeling I was having. I’m so stupid, I thought, thinking it had to do with those manuscripts. I had just let them consume me and my thoughts.

  Dr. Margulies’ funeral was the hardest thing in the wor
ld for me to do. Mase pulled me out of the car and steered me over to the gravesite. My large black hat and sunglasses covered my tear-stained face. My heels sunk down into the soft grass as the shiny black and silver casket drew closer and closer.

  As I neared the hole where they were going to put Dr. Margulies, I started having those same feelings that I had before going to Jerusalem.

  What if there really isn’t a heaven or a God? What if Dr. Margulies is lying cold in the ground and that’s all? It’s just over for him. No heaven, no hell. Nothing. It’s just over.

  That next week was so hard for me. I called Dr. Margulies’ wife a few days after the funeral to let her know I was available for whatever she needed, although I don’t know how I thought I could help her when I was having a hard time helping myself. This time I was able to talk. I was in my bedroom cleaning out my jewelry box when I came across the diamond and gold bracelet that Dr. Margulies had given me when I received my Ph.D. He had it engraved “A Shiny Star, for my Shining Star.” I held it in my hand as I talked to Mrs. Margulies.

  She told me that Dr. Margulies’ mother had died just about a week before he did. That they had just returned from Virginia settling her affairs. I hadn’t known. He had been gone so much lately for the museum that I didn’t even think anything of it when he was away.

  I was teary-eyed the whole time I talked to her. After we hung up, I put on the bracelet he gave me. Clutching the engraved charm, squeezing it in my fist I laid across the bed and was grabbing Kleenex off of the night stand when the phone rang. It was Mrs. Margulies again. She said she forgot that she had some of Dr. Margulies things he worked with to give to me. It was just some old notebooks, articles and books, but she wanted me to have them so I could have a part of him with me, too. She said she knew he would want me to have them because she knew how much he loved me. I really started to cry then. I promised I would come and get them soon. I thanked her, hung up the phone and buried my head in my pillows.

  The museum tour was completely in my hands now. I had to put all this craziness concerning the manuscripts and my own personal bout with madness aside and give the tour my undivided attention. I decided to dedicate the exhibit to the memory of my teacher and my friend whom I dearly loved and would sorely miss. I named the tour, “מורה נפלא: Our Passage to Antiquity.” “מורה נפלא” pronounced mo-REH neef-LAH, is Hebrew for “wonderful teacher.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Not working on the manuscripts actually didn’t make me feel any better, but it was a start. I concentrated on life. The Christmas holidays were coming up, so I kept busy with that. I baked, shopped, cleaned up my house, and shopped. Worked extra, extra hard on the tour for the museum (Dr. Margulies would have been pleased) and shopped some more. Shopping was a wonderful distraction.

  Thinking about Dr. Margulies made me realize that I hadn’t gotten over to see Mrs. Margulies yet, though I had kept in touch by phone. She was always so happy to hear from me. I promised myself I would see her before the New Year came in.

  It was pretty easy to let the tour occupy my thoughts. There were so many things that had to be done. Dr. Margulies’ death had created a lot of extra work, work that truly needed to be done by more than one person. But I refused to let anyone else work on it because I wanted it to be the best it could be. My mother always said, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.”

  My family had planned our usual Christmas gathering minus our parents who were out of town. My father’s sister had taken ill all of a sudden and my parents went to see about her. But even with my parents away, we decided we would still all go to my parents’ church and then go to their house afterward, exchange gifts and have dinner there. Our parents’ house was “home” for all of us. The dark wood ceiling beams and woodwork, eggshell walls in every room and their kitchen that belonged in the seventies always made everything feel good.

  My mother was so sad that she wasn’t going to be home with us for Christmas. The first time ever. She even thought about not going with my father and staying home with us. But my father can’t even pick out a shirt to put on in the mornings without my mother, so we convinced her to go. She was so pitiful. She just cried when she left, you would have thought she was never coming back. I would be so happy to get away from my kids, especially if I had kids like Greg, Gerald and Doobie. I don’t know what’s wrong with my mother.

  In preparation for our Christmas celebration, on Christmas Eve, Mase, my brothers and Callie’s husband went out to get the Christmas tree for my parents’ house. They got the biggest tree I had ever seen. It was beautiful.

  My siblings spent the better part of Christmas eve decorating the tree and arguing whether it was straight or not and how to decorate it. We listened to the Temptations’ A Soulful Christmas and Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas play in the background and reminisced about Christmases gone by. The kids played games, while the adults laughed and talked. The family interaction, the fresh smell of the tree, the crackle of the fire, the twinkling of the lights and, I guess more importantly, the reason for the season really lightened my mood. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits. Even “Grumpy Greg” who had been constantly teasing me about our little excursion to Jerusalem, was pleasant tonight, to everyone, including me.

  We of course had food. No way could we have gotten my brothers to work or the kids to sit still without filling up their bellies. So everyone had brought a dish or two, and me, Claire and Callie also brought desserts.

  I refused to help do much in decorating or in preparing the food except for giving directions. I sat on the couch most of the night and read my Time Magazine. I let Callie and Claire heat up the food and set the table while I peeped over the top of my magazine and watched as my brothers broke up half of my mother’s Christmas decorations trying to trim the tree. She would probably kill them when she got back for destroying her “precious memories,” as she called them, which was fine with me.

  I had started a subscription to Time not too long after the Pizza Fiasco (yes, I started calling it that, too). I had to have something to occupy my mind. Every week I would read them from cover to cover. I had found that from week to week the articles in the magazine seemed to be right in sync with my mood. I usually sat, with a box of Kleenex, at the kitchen table or in my study. Time had become my psychoanalyst.

  “Justin, come eat.”

  I looked up from my magazine and saw that everyone had sat down to eat. Claire was standing beside the table waiting for me. She of course would make sure I wasn’t left out.

  “What are you reading anyway?” Gerald got up from the table and came over and snatched the magazine from me and tossed it to Doobie as I reached up to get it back. “You’ve been reading that thing all night.”

  I can’t believe she’s reading that.” Greg said. “When did you start keeping up with current events?”

  I knew he couldn’t be nice for long. He started with the “All you know about are two thousand-year old dead people” jokes.

  “World Hunger?” Doobie read the title of the article I was reading. “What a depressing article.” He looked over at me. “Why are you reading this stuff?”

  “Give me back my magazine.”

  Doobie flipped through the magazine, “Here, this is what you should be reading.” He threw the magazine down in front of me. “Movie and Music Review. Just keep it light, Justin. No need to read all that depressing stuff. You’ve been in such a blue funk lately. You don’t need anything to add to your mood.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Hey, speaking of movies has anyone see that movie Men in Black?” Sean asked. Glad the subject was changed from me.

  “That’s been out for a while, little brother. You just now seeing that?” Doobie asked.

  “It may have been out at the movies, but it just came out on cable,” Sean answered.

  “Oh, yeah. Cheap Sean. Can’t even pay to go to a movie,” Gerald teased.

  “You know they’ve gone alien cr
azy,” Michael chimed in. “Practically every movie that comes out is about aliens anymore. Even NASA is in on this alien craze. They’re working in conjunction with the Russians, of all people, to find out what’s happening on Mars, to see if they can find signs of life.”

  I don’t believe in aliens, UFOs or anything of the sort. We are the only people in the universe,” Claire declared emphatically.

  Greg smiled at Claire and reached over and patted her on her head. “Good thing they’re not all like you lil’sis.”

  She didn’t pay any attention to Greg, she just kept right on talking. “You would have to believe in evolution in order to believe that there are other people out there and I don’t believe in evolution.”

  “Why would you have to believe in evolution?” Sean questioned her reasoning.

  “Because,” she explained, “life on other planets would have had to evolve. God only put man in one place. The people on Earth are one of a kind.”

  “Well, I’m with Claire,” I said. “God only put man on one planet and that was Earth.”

  “And,” I said. “Man did not evolve from some primordial pool a billion years ago. The people on Earth are the first and only people.”

  “No one said anything about evolution, Justin. None of us believe that man evolved. But God could have easily put humans or some kind of like form on other planets.” Michael countered.

  “Well, if that’s true, how come it doesn’t say so in the Bible?” Claire questioned.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I think this alien stuff is senseless,” Mase said. “They should spend the money that they’re spending to go to the moon, or wherever they’re going these days, on the life forms they know exist. Man.”