Lydia Netzer - Shine Shine Shine

“Your baby is a little girl.”

A girl. It was as if she couldn’t move. Her veins were cold with love and fear.

IN THE WEEKS BEFORE the launch of the rocket, Maxon and Sunny received requests from media outlets, asking for interviews. To populate the moon with robots and then with humans: this was potentially a story. There was no other NASA wife as perfectly presentable. There was no other NASA couple as lithe and tall. When Maxon and Sunny appeared in pictures together, there was a certain sexiness about them that led people to wonder what intrigued them about this whole moon situation. Was it really the fact that a rocket was taking robots to live up on the moon? Or was it just this handsome elegant woman and her tall, haunted astronaut man?

Cooperating with the NASA publicity department, Maxon went to New York for eighteen hours to visit the talk shows. He joked and smiled, made small talk, and comically misunderstood sexual innuendoes. But Sunny refused to do any appearances at first. She said, “I am pregnant. I can’t fly.” When the Today show agreed to send a crew to her house, she balked at that, too. She didn’t want to disrupt the life of her child any more than his father would disrupt it by going into space. She said this, and the people that she was talking to seemed to understand.

Finally she agreed to be interviewed on the local news in Norfolk. In this way, she would not seem to be avoiding notice. She would seem to be a trooper. That’s what they would call her. She would glitter with sacrifice. She wore her most amazing wig, the kind of style you can only achieve with a two-hundred-dollar styling appointment, or with real human hair permanently affixed in a shape. She wore coral, which was said to warm under studio lights. She wore pearls.

The network was housed in a brick building on Granby Street, unremarkable except for the news channel logo attached to its roof. Inside, the studio was a large dry room, painted dark, high ceilings hung with canister lights. Cables in braids roped from camera to set and around the floor, like black rivers across the dark room, and she picked her way across them to the set, supported on one side by Maxon.

“What are you going to wear, Maxon?” she had said that morning.

“My space suit,” he said. “That’s what I always wear when I’m astronauting.”

“You don’t even have the space suit here,” she said, too distracted with her eyebrows to acknowledge his joke.

“Well, I’m going to wear red overalls and a straw hat.”

“Oh yeah?”

“And sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

“Maxon, I don’t want to do this,” she said.

“Why? You’ll do great. Look how great you are, all the time. Nothing rattles you. You’re a machine.”

“Maxon, why would you even say something like that?”

“Like what?”

Sunny peeled off an eyebrow and put it back on, a tiny bit higher up on her brow.

“I’m afraid to do it, because I’m afraid I’m going to cry or throw up or something.”

“Why?”

“You’re going into space. I’m worried. People worry about their spouses going on business trips to Kansas City.”

“Well, Kansas City is perilous. The gravity there is nine-tenths of what it is in Virginia.”

“That’s not even true.”

“I bet I can get the news guy to believe it.”

“Shut up.”

“I bet I can though.”

Eventually he had chosen to wear a NASA polo shirt and navy dockers. As they took their places on the set, she appraised his appearance and found him acceptable.

“You look good,” she told him. “Just don’t start talking about the robot that can really understand the tango and we’ll be fine.”

“You’ll be fine,” said Maxon. “The robot that can really understand the tango was my only material.”

Les Weathers bounded onto the set, fresh from hair and makeup, no doubt. He was still wearing his tissue-paper shields tucked into his collar to keep his crisp white shirt from getting smudged with foundation.

“Hey, guys! How we doing today?” he said. He grinned his enormous grin and grasped hands with first Maxon, then Sunny. His hand was warm, strong, generous. She knew that Maxon did not like to shake hands. Seeing Maxon’s sharp white fist close around Les Weathers’s suntanned paw made Sunny stare for a moment. Maxon was not tanned below the line his bicycle gloves made on his wrist. Here is the man I married , she thought. He has a fist like the talons of a hawk. Here is the man I did not marry. He has the skin tone of a lion in full sun . She wondered if they put foundation on Les Weathers’s hands.

“Great,” said Maxon. “Doing great.”

“Thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview,” he said to Maxon. Then conspiratorially, to Sunny: “Go WNFO, right? What a scoop!”

“What a scoop,” said Maxon. “Go WNFO.”

“Les, you’re so kind to bring us in, and help us share Maxon’s rocket launch with the world. I really appreciate it,” said Sunny, unleashing a radiant smile. She lowered herself into a chair between Maxon and Les Weathers, crossing her ankles under her so that her cork-wedge sandals were tidily arranged. They were going to tape the interview, show it during the evening news, when there would be the largest number of viewers. This way it would be syndicated to all the affiliates across the country. Maybe the Today show would pick it up after all.

Depends on how the mission goes, said the producer. Now, what does that mean, asked Sunny.

Was Les Weathers about to become famous on the back of Maxon’s mission to the moon? One big story, the correct flashing teeth all lined up in a row, and a man with nice blond hair could be headed for the big time. But only if something terrible happened. Or at least something unexpected. The fate of the anchorperson depends on a tragedy or a revolution. Sunny looked at Maxon and back at Les Weathers, and felt a ripple of nerves across her chest.

“Are you all right?” asked Les Weathers.

“Oh, it’s the pregnancy,” she said. “I’m absolutely fine. Thank you for your concern.”

The producer told them where they were to look (Les Weathers, each other) and where they were not to look (the cameras), and how they should smile and be animated.

“Act like you’re talking to a friend, at a party,” said the producer. “We’re happy here. We’re going to the moon!”

They had already been pretending Les Weathers was their friend. This would not be hard.

The interview began. What does this mean for America? What does this mean for the world? Maxon produced answers from the script he had been rehearsing. It was almost as if he were sort of a humanist, affirming a manifest destiny in the stars. He described the bright future, successfully veiling his real self for the camera. For now he was not the terse, bony guy about to leave the Earth for the first time. He was buoyant, almost cheerful. He did not say, “I rounded up a gang of robots, and I’m headed for the moon, to take it over.” He did not say, “This is the way we evolve. This is the way our culture transforms.”

Instead he said it serious: “It is a great move for mankind.” He said it droll: “We’re finally furnishing our mother-in-law suite.” He said it poetic: “Machines on the gray desert of time’s horizon.”

Sunny smiled and nodded, her knees pressed lightly together, coral cardigan wrapping the sides of her pregnant belly. She felt a droplet of sweat begin to roll under her wig. The lights were hot.

“And how do you feel about all this?” Les asked Sunny warmly.

“Les,” she said, “I married a man in love with robots. Am I really surprised he’s making off with a robot harem, to populate the sky?”