She’d asked, “Where’s the arm?”
He said, “I barely even need two arms nowadays.”
She got in the truck, in the driver’s seat, because technically her father was not supposed to get behind a wheel, with or without the prosthetic. Still, one had to wonder how he drove stick without it, maybe he used his shoulder to steer while he switched gears, and then she shuddered in fear for everyone else on the road.
Since she was always afraid to ask how were things at the house, she asked about his volunteer job. He was a docent at an astronomical research institute sited deep in the forest. A former NASA base — from there One small step for mankind was relayed to the world — that the DoD commandeered in ’81 for “listening.”
“Oh, they don’t need me much. It gets pretty dull at times.”
“What’s the big question these days?”
He looked at her wanly. “What is dark matter.”
Esme snorted. Five minutes together, and already they were negotiating the extent to which he was allowed to grouse now that his favorite pastime, the Internet, had been restricted by her mother. He’d been spending hours a day chatting with people online, and Linda didn’t like it.
He coughed into his fist. The road went up the mountain in christie curves, the locals taking them fast and Esme wending along like Grandma. Her dad hammered the dash because no heat was coming up through the one vent aimed his way, and said, “That’s some kid you’ve got,” before whacking the dash again. She had no idea what this meant, though it probably meant nothing. For her dad, the world was middling. How’s the weather? So-so. How’s your grandkid? Fine.
If it was the truth Esme wanted, she needed to ask her mother. Or just stand within one hundred feet and Linda would tell her.
They got to the house. It had snowed, and because her parents never departed from the path to the road, the snow was untrammeled but for deer tracks and wild turkeys and, beautifully, a snow angel. Her daughter lived here. She thought she even saw her face peering out the window from behind a curtain, though the second they got out of the truck, the curtain stopped rustling and all was quiet.
The Helix had been making news for years, but by now it was making headlines. Rumors and gossip. Her parents didn’t have a TV, but they read the papers, and there was always the Internet. And, while they had never met Thurlow, they knew who he was. Esme didn’t think it would be long before her mother took it upon herself to tell Ida everything. Her plan was to hope she didn’t.
“Mom? Ida?” She walked through the house. It had two floors and a porch that overlooked a valley and mountains in the distance. Half the trees had lost their leaves; the view was a mixed treat. She went to the kitchen and saw her dad by the fridge with an ice cream sandwich. He had taken off his jacket, and, since his sweater made prominent the empty sleeve hung by his side, she suddenly wondered if Ida was terrorized by the sight — if, despite the years she’d been living here, the arm creeped her out.
In the mudroom were sneakers but no boots, the boots put to better use on Ida’s feet as she and Linda played outside, the one making a snowman and the other taking photos, a million per second, one for each second Esme had missed seeing her child grow up. She had the idea her mom was making her a scrapbook, though none such had ever materialized.
She watched them through the window. Ida was wearing leggings that looked like neoprene and a bubble jacket she did not recognize, or recognized dimly; it was colored bark and had an HB Surf Series badge sewn into the arm. And then it hit her: these were her brother’s clothes. His steamer wet suit. His travel jacket for that one surfing trip off the coast of New Zealand when he was twelve. Esme was so floored by the evidence her parents had kept his stuff and even brought it with them to this place that it helped ease down the pill of her daughter ignoring her when she ran out of the cabin all smiles.
She hugged Ida anyway because the parent unloved is also undeterred. They had not seen each other in 3 months. Ida had been alive for 117 months, of which most of her last 1⁄39 Esme had been traveling. There were other 1⁄36s and 1⁄27s and even 1⁄18s for that half-year deployment to Diego Garcia, though maybe that was more like a 1⁄12 expedition, since Ida was only six at the time, which meant not even math could declaw Esme’s failings.
Next Esme greeted her mom, who did the scariest thing in her repertoire, which was to cock an eyebrow. The hairs there had shed long ago, so she’d taken to penciling them in with black liner. Every month, the curve got more pronounced and severe. It was a sickle, an arch, and, by now, a delta above each eye. When raised, the brow was lethal.
“Well, well,” Linda said, but without the scorn Esme had been readying herself for. In fact, the A brow was a red herring. She wasn’t mad anymore. Esme thought maybe she was fronting for Ida’s sake, but so what? She would take it. They hugged. And the hug was nice. She had never found in her parents a source of strength since Chris went down, and it was not like one hug was going to lade her coffers with the courage of heart to right her life, but it wasn’t hurting, either.
Linda said, “Ida and I were just finishing up this snowman,” and, to Ida, “What’s his name again?”
“Don.”
Esme was not sure she’d ever heard a name spoken with greater spite. Ida jammed a stick in his eye and looked at her mom. “Your clothes are ugly,” she said, and she marched back into the house.
“That went well,” Esme said. “Don? Who names her snowman Don?”
“She’s right, you know. If you’re going wear that nonsense, at least join the army. Be for real.”
Esme shrank a couple of feet. Her parents had only a vague sense of what she did, enough to know it screwed them up — New identities? Really? — but not enough to think it worth the trouble to find out more. Perhaps her father was more sympathetic, but she didn’t know; they didn’t talk.
She fixed the snowman’s eye. Apologized for his care.
“Not to worry,” Linda said. “He’s cold as ice,” and then she grinned, and to Esme this grin might have seemed stupid, except that nothing about her mother was ever stupid. She was too sharp and cagey to grin like that unless it was for sport or design. “Now, listen,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve got news.”
Esme followed her through the snow. Her mother was the kind of woman who always liked to speak her beef with someone hungry for it.
“Is it Ida? She looks okay to me. Or, wait, is it school? Is she failing at school?”
Linda looked on her with what had to have been contempt, though maybe it was contempt plus pity, which is kind of like cherry Pepto — not so bad.
“It’s about your brother,” she said. “Chris.”
“Right, because I’ve actually forgotten his name.”
They were on the patio under porch lights. Esme sat at the table, her mom nearby.
“We got a call from the hospital,” Linda said.
The words sounded tense but happy, and since Esme still had no idea how her mother felt about Chris in a coma all these years, she assumed this meant he was dead. A twenty-four-year nap comes to an end, and her mother is released from the emotional vigil she’d been on or wanted to be on: both seemed exhausting.
Linda leaned forward, elbows on the table. She spoke the next part slow. “He said something. Out loud. A nurse just happened to be there.”